We’ve all been there – “Is this character lying, or is the player just not being very believable?”
The Problem
Early on in my larping career, I was very interested in playing on lies. Back then, I really enjoyed fiction focussing on intrigues and scheming, like renaissance politics and Game of Thrones. I quickly learned that there were problems when it came to lying in larps: since larp means collectively pretending, collaborating in telling the same “lie”, it is much more difficult to decide if a character is lying or not, and knowing what is actually true in the reality of the larp.
In everyday life, we have a lot of different tools at our disposal to decide if someone is being truthful or lying:
The Unlikely Statement. If the suspected liar makes a statement that seems highly unlikely, it feels very probable that they are lying. However, in a larp context we can never be certain that our co-players have read all of the material explaining the fiction of the larp, that they remember it correctly or that they understood it in the same way we did. There are also a lot of aspects of the fiction that are not detailed in the fiction documents, where we as players need to fill in the blanks. We can never be certain that we have a joint view of what is probable and believable. As good co-players, we usually opt to “yes, and…” the improvisations of others.
Verifying the Truth. When someone makes a statement, it is usually possible to verify it – for example by investigating directly. In larps, this is difficult, as we often need to play on a lot of things that are not in fact there, and are not verifiable.
Conflicting Statements. If you were to talk to different characters about something that they have a joint knowledge of, you might get a lot of conflicting statements. In reality, this would be a pretty sure sign that some or all of them are lying. In larp, however, it might just be a sign that they are all trying to improvise, and have not had a chance to decide off-game what the truth is.
Signs of Uncertainty. When someone is lying, especially if they are not very good at it or are in a very difficult situation, they usually show signs of uncertainty. They might wring their hands, bite their lips, glance off to the sides, stutter or even change what they are saying during the conversation. However, things like this are also signs of nervousness, and often occur when we are finding it difficult to improvise something believable.
It is possible to broadcast that we are lying to our co-players. The surest way to do this is by overdoing the signs of uncertainty, and not needing much pressure to give away the lie. This is useful when playing a bad liar – smooth, polished lies are more difficult (but of course not impossible) to signal. This usually requires a high-resolution play-style, in which you are able to communicate much with very subtle gestures and variations, and having co-players who are able to read these hints.
The Poker Face
At the recently played larp The Future is Straight (2021) I found myself wanting to play a capable liar, while still being able to signal to my co-players what was true and what was a lie, and at times invite them to challenge the lies and call me out as a liar. Inspired by this need, after the larp I came up with the Poker Face meta-technique.
The Poker Face is used to signal if something is true, if it is a convincing lie, or if it is an obvious lie. This is done through the positioning of one’s hands when making a statement.
The technique is best suited for dialogue between two people sitting down, with their hands free and visible to each other. It can be used in situations with more people involved, and it is possible to use while standing up. It can be used by all players present in a scene, or just by the one currently in focus (for example, in an interview or interrogation). To make the technique more easily recognizable, both hands should be used.
The technique uses three hand positions:
Palms facing upwards: This statement is true. The character is being honest.
Photo by Patrik Åkervinda.
Palms facing downwards, hand is open: This statement is a lie, but it is told smoothly and convincingly. It should only be called out if there is a good reason for it.
Photo by Patrik Åkervinda.
Hands closed into fists: This statement is a lie, and it is not told very convincingly. The player welcomes the co-players to call out the lie.
Photo by Patrik Åkervinda.
This is the technique in its most basic form. In addition to this, I have two suggestions that you may or may not want to use, depending on the design of your larp:
Palms together, directed at interviewee: If the Poker Face technique is available as a tool at the larp, players may nevertheless forget to use it. If a player would like to know whether a recent statement is true or false, they can put their palms together and point them at the person they’re talking to, and ask “Really?”, “Is that so? Tell me more!” or something along these lines. The co-player is reminded to use the technique, and can give the requested meta-information while continuing to talk about the same subject.
Photo by Patrik Åkervinda.
Hand half-closed, palm facing downwards: You may come to decide that the difference between the smooth lie (palms down) and the obvious lie (fist) is too stark, and that you would like to have a middle-ground. This is one more gesture for your players to remember, but the scale from open hand to closed fist is intuitive if workshopped.
The design of the hand-signs is connected to our views of how lying looks in our natural body language. Open, visible palms are understood to signal openness and honesty, while hidden palms are not. The reason fists signal a bad lie is because a bad liar is likely to look tense and uncomfortable. Someone who lies well is more likely to have a relaxed, natural posture, hence the relaxed hands with palms facing downwards.
Cover image: Photo by Patrik Åkervinda. Photo has been cropped.
This article is published in the Knutpunkt 2022 magazine Distance of Touch and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Greip, Julia. 2022. “Play on Lies.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 142-144. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
This article describes how Confraria das Ideias (a larp group from Brazil) uses music as a game design element. The text is based on own experiences and learning, especially in the larps Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017) and The Last Night (2019), with practical examples, future ideas, and sharing different ways to use music in the larp.
Since the late 1990s, the group has been making free-style and one-shot larps, each with different themes, proposals and stories. The games are held in public spaces such as libraries, cultural centers and theaters, all free of charge to participants and funded by public and private funds earmarked for cultural projects. (see Falcão 2014)
Over the years, Confraria das Ideias has utilized music in larps in different ways, recognizing its importance in the trajectories of the larps produced.
Music is able to bring old memories to the fore and make you experience feelings such as passion, sadness, anger and joy.It is present in the performing arts and derived from its earliest movements, from Greek tragedy to modern cinema, passing through the most artistic expressions and – also – in larp.
“Music, more than any other art, has an extensive neuropsychological representation, with direct access to affectivity, impulse control, emotions and motivation. It can stimulate non-verbal memory through secondary associative areas which allow direct access to the system of integrated perceptions linked to associative areas of cerebral confluence that unify the various sensations.” (Weigsding 2015)
Since the first larps, the group realized that the soundtrack had great influence on immersion and, with some scenography, served as a foundation for the stories proposed in the characters and in the plot to manifest themselves in a more fluid way. But, over the years, this use of music in larp grew and started to gain important space in the stages of creation and execution of larp.
When the Magic Begins: Music as a Soundtrack in Larp
It all starts with an idea for a new larp. It is discussed by the group, improved gradually. Characters are written, while the scenographic proposal is created along with the plot. Design elements, mechanics and props are developed. The larp is publicized and people express an interest in participating. The day arrives, the scenography is set up for a few hours; costumes are distributed, and the entire reception is prepared.
Then, the participants begin to arrive and prepare. Once everyone are together, the guidelines for the game are communicated.
After this the proposed immersion for larp takes place, and the participants are positioned on the stage – waiting for the combined signal to start. Until that moment, the larp does not yet exist.
And that is when, as if by magic, larp manifests itself. A song appears in the room, especially selected for the moment. It is the trigger indicating to everyone that the veil of reality, of everyday life, is on the ground and that from there their characters come to life for a new world of discovery, mystery, drama and adventure.
It is magic! For a spectator, it seems that everything prepared up to that moment comes to life instantly, with the first chords of the intro music. As a kind of trance, characters take on the bodies of the players, moving them through space.
Music works not only as an initial snap, but as a catalyst for this proposed new world. It plays a dramatic role, sometimes as a diegetic element, sometimes not. It helps to set the tone of the story, to break the limiting personal barriers that block actions: it frees action and imagination, aware that they will find support and reinforcement in other participants.
The control of the songs happens in a prepared sound table, and basic equipment comprised of a notebook and sound output, strategically placed at the scene.
The complexity depends on the design of the larp, which may require constant changes in music and sound effects or just a single track throughout the game.
Photo by Leandro Godoy
Paulo Renault, one of the founding members of the Confraria, producer and responsible for preparing and conducting the sound mixer, uses the Virtual DJ software to conduct the tracks during larps, says:
“Among the ways of giving rhythm to the larp, the sound, through music or sound effects, is something that plays in deep layers of the player. The use of equipment such as a mixer allows mixing effects and sounds, creating an immersive outdoor atmosphere for the game.”
As in the larp State of Grace (1997, 2011) where the soundtrack is composed of Gregorian chants in a constant loop, helping to transform the atmosphere of a traditional São Paulo mansion into a French monastery of the Middle Ages.
Or as in the larp Neon Dragon Express (2018, 2019), where the theme is a cyberpunk adventure. The soundtrack is composed of electronic and industrial songs that are played interspersed with pre-recorded ads and various reports that are inserted by the organizers according to the narrative of the game.
In both cases, music exerts a strong power in the participants’ imagination, quickly placing their minds and hearts on the theme planned for the larp.
In the larp Extraordinary Stories(2009, 2014, 2015, 2020), inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and set in a masquerade ball in the 19th century, the soundtrack also has the mission of helping the sensation the passage of time. In addition it marks important moments such as dancing in the main hall with the waltzes of Johann Strauss II: The Blue Danube Waltz, Kaiser-Walzer and Rathausball-Tänze in addition to using a dramatic and apotheotic melody for the final moments of history, with Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell (soundtrack by Requiem for a Dream, version with violins).
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Extraordinary Stories (2020)
The choice of songs to compose the track are contextualized and planned in the production stages; but it is important to pay close attention to the operation of the sound board. After all, the execution of the tracks ends up directly reflecting on the game’s actions, but it can also be influenced by them.
When the design of the larp requires this type of complexity in the operation, the organization needs to keep an eye on the larp’s events. From this perspective, they decide to change the pre-selected tracks and sound effects, in search of a better immersion and correspondence with the game, and also end up influencing the rhythm of the larp.
One might say that the music helps materialize the larp, with its execution bringing in the concepts of the game planned previously.
It is closely linked to the design of the game not only in its content and sequence of execution, but also in the format that it presents itself. One example is the larp Club D (2016) which has as its setting a mansion of the highest society, where it was decided to replace the sound table with a pair of professional guitarists, thus seeking the atmosphere of refinement that live classical music provides.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Club D (2016)
A New Trick, Another View
As a larp designer you can propose an experience that uses, as a tool, or a collection of songs where the lyrics provide insights for the players during the larp session.
The idea is to use the songs to evoke emotions, memories and feelings in the participants, as a way to employ bleed to create larps with more introspective themes.
“At its most positive, bleed experiences can produce moments of catharsis: when the player and character emotions are synced in a powerful moment of emotional expression. Most often, these experiences manifest in great displays of joy, love, anger, or grief; in-game crying is often associated with bleed.” (Bowman 2015)
The first larp with this perspective sought to capture the aura of the album Tommy (1969) of the band The Who and create a game that was born from a very personal reflection on the album.
This became the larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb, about a group of young people who over the years need to deal with the frustration, trauma, disenchantment and misunderstandings of adult life.
This time, the songs came to have a direct influence on the larp’s narrative. As a designer, it was necessary to dissect track by track of the disc, and from this analysis make the content reflect on the dynamics of larp.
This is not a literal transcription of the album into larp, even though it is present all the time from production to the execution of the game, but rather a source of inspiration for something new.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
The larp was divided into acts, which represented the passage of the years. The players were workshopped to interpret music as part of the mechanics indicating not only the beginning and the end of each act, but also insights for the characters, who had plots created from excerpts of the lyrics of the songs.
This way, a character that had in his background, an abuse suffered by his uncle, would be impacted immediately upon hearing the song “Uncle Earn” where the theme was addressed.
This type of approach with music bringing emotional issues to the characters ends up also dealing with the affective memory that the songs exercise in the players. It has more impact on those who already knew the disc, but is capable of promoting different sensations in all the participants regardless.
“Recursively, the proposal sought to make the players’ experiences affect the sensations of the characters. The idea of a group of friends who, in the midst of disagreements, meet some times in the 47-year period was a metaphor for friendships that are absent due to setbacks in everyday life. A recurring finding by the players was that, even within the fictional environment of the larp, it was friendships distanced from the daily reality of the players that caused feelings to emerge on the characters.” (Iuama and Miklos 2019)
The larp starts with a group of friends gathered in 1969 to celebrate their last year in high school. When playing the “Tommy” album and lighting a candle, the mechanics of time travel, marked by music, begin.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
The larp was set up on a theater stage. Therefore, the participants were instructed to address the backstage whenever they heard the music play, naturally, each in their own time, as if they were saying goodbye. There, they received a change of clothes and a card indicating when the next act will take place and some relevant facts about what happened in the character’s life. In addition, pre-recorded audio about events in the history of Brazil that were emblematic for the period. For example, the track Do You Think It’s Alright? was used to introduce the act where the characters returned from the “Diretas Já” marches – a movement that sought the end of the violent Military Dictatorship that devastated Brazil.
The return to the play was marked by the next song on the album, with the participants instructed to gradually return to the stage, which contained some updates of scenography to match the time.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
The track We’re not gonna take it comes as a refusal to this whole trajectory full of secrets and annoyances, and the characters are invited by the stanza “See me, Feel me”, to look at themselves and return to the initial moment of larp, in 1969, with the same costumes and initial positions, and the provocation that their experience was a future that could still be changed, leading the participants to smiles and tears.
The choice to use the music to structure the larp brought the need for a guide sheet to help operating the sound table:
Sound desk guide sheet, by Leandro Godoy
The Materiality of Music as a Magical Element
The materiality of the music can be used in its design, bringing benefits to the player’s immersion.
The digital format and streaming allowed the distribution of music in quantity and speed never imagined, but the relationship of object with the music, the album, the touch to feel the vinyl records or the huge inserts that exhibited art were lost representing the songs.
“(…) materiality (and ‘possibilities’) are realities that are always perceived – mediated, therefore – by human actors, as social and cultural subjects. Thus, there is a complex dialectical interaction between the cultural dimension and the properties of objects (here, specifically, the musical material), which conditions the way in which a subject and an object interact, in a given context.” (Boia 2008)
Imbued with this nostalgic feeling, a larp was imagined where players had the opportunity to experience these sensations.
With the larp The Last Night, the Confraria das Ideias proposed to create a game about nostalgia, conflict between generations and the different ways in which these generations dealt with music.
The idea of having an old radio station as a scenario sought to allow participants to discover a little bit of this tangibility of music. Immerse yourself in an era: from the touch when handling vinyl records, discovering their sounds and shape; to occupy the space of the stage, use microphones, play out the script and perform radio soap operas; bring the programme to life.
Thus, the participants had control of the larp’s own soundtrack in real time.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
In the main plot, half of the participants received characters who, in 2019, discover an old radio station that was destroyed in the early 1960s by a terrible fire. The rest received characters who were the ghosts of the people who worked at the radio station, and who were stuck reliving the last night, in an eternal loop.
For the idea to work, the sound table was set up inside the radio station itself, so that the participants themselves could operate it, including releasing the microphones for live musical numbers. The players were able to choose to sing live or use playback.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
The audio was broadcast live across the larp venue (stage, aisle and dressing rooms), as well as being broadcast live to YouTube to simulate the radio.
Everything that the participants chose to put on the program also became the larp’s soundtrack.
With the characters in charge of the programming, they were given the power to command the tone of the larp, alternating moments that went from comic to dramatic, allowing musical discoveries and sharing their own repertoire.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
Thomaz Barbeiro, professor of history and member of Confraria das Ideias, was one of those responsible for researching the material:
“For me, as a historian and passionate about culture, the search for vinyls for the composition of “The Last Night” is, above all, an instigating work with sources and, consequently, the satisfaction of being able to take some of the critical work of historical science into a larp, a game that adds fun and learning about you, the other, about the present time and the past you want”.
Some players used the vinyl record player for the first time in their life during the larp.The touch made the experience more real, contributing to the immersion.
With fun and memorable moments, the larp came to an end, but the magic remained present: the participants did not leave the scene even after the game ended, extending the fun for a few more hours in improvised sessions of songs, novels and new random fictitious commercials.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
To transfer this experience to other larps, the designer needs to plan the technical part carefully (in-game equipment connected to the sound system) and provide the material (discs, CDs, musical instruments) for the players to use. Imagine a larp where a character can put a song in a dramatic moment, and it reverberates throughout the scene? Allowing players to directly interfere with the soundtrack can benefit your larp.
Is it Possible to Use this Magic of the Musical Larp to Change the World?
By tradition and intention, Confraria das Ideias does not abstain from speaking in its work on important social issues, always seeking a dialogue for reflection and learning. And social inequality is one of the most challenging problems in Brazil (and in the rest of the world), amplified by the rise of the extreme right with an oppressive, homophobic, ultranationalist discourse, causing serious social damage and disruption in the name of its perverse economic agenda.
In this context, art through larp comes to question this model, launch a discussion and shed light on the subject.
Thinking about these issues, the idea arose of using music in a larp in order to represent social conflicts, and provoke an empathic vision.
Rhapsody Paulistana is a larp currently in production in which the players will investigate using the format of the great musicals in game mechanics, in order to engage with the genre and still provoke the participants to leave the comfort zone.
Luiz Prado, producer of larps – with a repertoire of immersive games – and a member of the Confraria das Ideias has for some time been investigating how to encourage participants to use their whole body more when composing and representing their characters in larps:
“A song can grab us by the hand and offer trips to infinite lands. We all already feel that when we hear a song that really gets us. When the song is used in larp, it is a kind of turbo for the transformation in the character and the arrival at the game world. The right music, added to the right disposition, throws the head player into a somersault without any protection in the experience”.
Rhapsody Paulistana goes in that direction, by provoking the senses further, by the observation and support in the game of the neighbor, and in how well-defined movements can be powerful communication tools in the larp.
Can magic create a safe environment that allows people to risk trying something? What tools will the organization need to bring to make this experience enjoyable and unforgettable for everyone? In addition to the obvious challenge of creating the game mechanics, one of the biggest desires is to keep larp accessible to all people, even those who don’t know how to sing or dance.
The idea is to use songs and dances as these tools, as part of the mechanics to obtain narrative turns, in addition to developing the game’s plot.
A pre-larp workshop will probably be needed to help participants to naturally utilize the mechanics throughout the larp.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
It is a provocation, seeking to challenge the limits of each one, and yet collaboratively build a dense narrative.
Music comes in as a magical element to unite differences. From the erudite to the popular, create a plot that confronts social issues, put the conflicts in focus by the musical style and promote a strong reflection of social inclusion. The players can do this with a strong emotional charge, as well as a repertoire that provokes a discussion that can go beyond the larp itself.
From Magician to Magician
A larp is an open work, which is built collectively. Regardless of how you choose for music to affect your game, it is important that not only the organizational team is fully prepared and involved with the game’s proposal. Communicating the intention of the work well is a way for everyone to contribute to the game.
Music plays a strong role in immersion, in the dramatic load and in the rhythm of the larps. It will invariably affect people emotionally, so take the time to discuss at the end of each larp. Hosting well is key to ending the game well.
While designing your larp, take time to reflect on these issues. And more: What is the best alternative to strengthen the experience you are proposing with larp? Make music part of the game? Live music? Loop soundtrack? Sounds that are mixed, controlled and played in real time according to the moment of the game? Having no music at all, and using only noise and sound effects?
Photo by Leonardo França, larp The Night of Love, Smile and Flower (2013)
Whether present in the game diegetically, pre-recorded or live, do not underestimate the power of using music in the design of your larp. Songs – popular or classical – have an influence on participants (including organizers). Being aware of this and recognizing this magic that surrounds us is quite enriching.
These choices should be made while you are designing your larp, when you have a more mature idea of how you want your larp to be. There is no ready formula for right or wrong, but different ways of interacting with music.
There are a few clichés: larps with a medieval theme using live folk music, larps that take place in a bar using a pre-recorded track from the time the story takes place, etc. We encourage larp designers to use the examples provided to extrapolate the use of music, think of alternatives, create soundtracks in which the lyrics appear as an insight to players, soundtracks that have markings during the larp, or deliver to participants a way for them to make their own larp soundtrack. You might also make a mix of all this. After all, there are no ready-made rules, just good ideas to enhance your larp’s emotions and experiences.
And, at the end of the larp when the music stops, each one will leave behind those fantastic characters, but never the lived experience, which will warmly perpetuate itself in their hearts.
Bibliography
Boia, Pedro dos Santos. 2008. Capturing the Materiality of Music in Sociological Analysis. Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto, Jun 2008.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 2, 2015.
Falcão, Luiz. 2014. “New tastes in Brazilian larp”. The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp.
Iuama, Tadeu, and Jorge Miklos. 2019. “Citizen and ecological communication: Experience of contemporary cultural resistance based on the performance of larp at the Youth Cultural Center of São Paulo”. Electronic journal of the Master’s Program in Communication at College Cásper Líbero Jun, 2019.
Weigsding, Jessica Adriane. 2015. “The influence of music on human behavior.” MUDI files v 18, n 2, p 47–62. State University of Maringá.
Audial Media
Mansell, Clint. 2000. ‘Lux Aeterna’. Nonesuch Records.
Strauss, Johann II. 1866, ‘The Blue Danube’, Op. 314.
Strauss, Johann II. 1889. ‘Kaiser-Walzer’, Op. 437.
Strauss, Johann II. 1890. ‘Rathausball-Tänze’, Op. 438.
The Who. 1969. Tommy. Recorded 19 September 1968 – 7 March 1969, Track / Decca.
Cover photo: Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Club D (2016)
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Godoy, Leandro. “The Use of Music as a Magical Element for the Larp Experience.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
There are monsters under my bed. When I was a child, I could sense them in every half-seen shadow, feel their breath on my neck. I knew monsters were imaginary. But I was still afraid.
I am a non-binary larper. Time and again, I find that larps are framed to create those shadowy spaces and summon monsters. Monsters hiding under the bed and in the closet, but much more real and able to harm me.
Most of my fellow larpers are lovely people who don’t intend their games to include monsters. They are happy to fight the big and dangerous monsters. But many of the monsters I fight are sneakier; they keep themselves invisible to well-meaning allies.
This is a guide to some of the monsters that non-binary adventurers encounter when they larp. If you are non-binary, you might recognise them and know you are not alone in your fight. If you are not, then I hope you can use this as a spotter’s guide to help you check your games to see if you might be creating fertile ground for monsters to spawn.
Basilisk, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Basilisk: This snake-like creature can petrify or kill with a glance. It is common in larps to find that a Basilisk has wiped all non-binary people from the game world. Non-binary adventurers risk petrification from the discomfort and dysphoria of being forced to play a binary gender. Even the reflection of a Basilisk’s gaze can kill: larps based on highly gendered media often mimic source material and exclude non-binary characters, unintentionally perpetuating a problem. The danger can be reduced to a painful skin condition by allowing non-binary characters who are perceived as binary, but beware; this opens you up to a Bogeyman attack.
Kelpie: These river spirits take the shape of a horse, trying to entice would-be riders up onto their back. At larp events, they appeal to players by offering the promise that people can sign up as their own gender – because that’s important to many people. When the non-binary adventurer mounts the Kelpie, it becomes clear that this was a ploy; the Kelpie attempts to drown them in the river by forcing them to sign up as Male or Female. Kelpies can also attack adventurers of sexual or romantic minorities, manifesting as a promise of romance plots that turn out to only be compatible with the sexuality of straight players.
Goblin: These monsters taunt and harry writers, whispering in their ears until they are afraid to include non-binary characters in their game “in case they get it wrong” – even though their larp contains no plots about the characters’ internal sense of gender. Gripped by fear, the writer does not notice that they have written many characters outside their experience, such as androids, giant insects, and humans with a binary gender not their own. While the Goblin’s attack seems subtle, the results are indistinguishable from the attack of a Basilisk. Fooled by the Goblin, the writer does not even think to consult a non-binary adventurer for advice.
Bogeyman, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Bogeyman: This monster lurks in the closet, ready to pull adventurers inside at any sign of gender-transgressing ‘bad behaviour’. If you attend a gendered game and decide to play in a gender non-conforming outfit, such as a woman in trousers – a common armour against dysphoria and often an adventurer’s only clothing – then watch out for this monster causing in-character hostility. This monster exists in larps, but also in many other contexts, and fighting too many becomes exhausting. It is often necessary to make a choice: hide from this monster and suffer the wounds in silence, or face it for yet another painful battle?
Dragon: Like Goblins, Dragons attack imaginations, destroying even the idea of better alternatives. There are numerous types; the non-binary and sexism Dragons like to team up, setting fire to whole cities of imagination so writers see only barren ground. Bereft of inspiration, the writer uses their own world and again chooses gender as the basis for the division of character roles and social dynamics. The resulting highly-gendered game harms AFAB people, but causes extra damage to a non-binary adventurer. The Dragon’s work also causes the GM to almost always cast non-binary adventurers as the gender they were assigned at birth, even when there is a better fitting character in another gender.
Changeling: This monster exists in disguise, often using words like ‘inclusivity’ and ‘feminism’ to create what seems like a welcoming space. Once inside their lair, they reveal their fangs and attack any trans person who enters. These monsters are so insidious because any enticing larp could be a Changeling lair; as a result, their very existence ensures that many an adventurer must distrust any game unless they clearly display support of transgender and non-binary inclusion, behaviour that Changelings usually struggle to mimic.
Minotaur, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Minotaur: These monsters like to hide inside a labyrinth. These can be subtle constructions, taking a while for an adventurer to realise they have been drawn in. While the game contains nothing openly problematic, it also contains no non-binary characters or suggestions for replacement gender dynamics written into the background. This allows the Minotaur to gradually fill in the gaps with its labyrinth, reproducing existing social dynamics and player biases. The adventurer experiences a gradual realisation that they are becoming more lost with every turn, as the distant roaring sound grows ever closer.
Ghost: An adventurer possessed by this monster, becomes invisible. They can wear pronoun badges, deliberately mix gendered clothing and other markers, and correct people’s misuse of their pronouns, but it won’t help – they are treated as binary despite all evidence to the contrary. The more this happens, the tighter the grip of the Ghost. If you are haunted by a Ghost, your only hope is that there are enough psychic players in the game to affirm your characters’ gender until the influence of this monster has been overcome.
Zombie: Zombies are slow and would not be very threatening on their own, but they can destroy an adventurer through sheer relentless numbers. Phrases like ‘ladies and gentlemen’, ‘he or she’, ‘this is a game for women but men are also welcome’, lack of gender-neutral toilets at a venue – these things permeate out of character interactions and they build up until the adventurer becomes worn down from a thousand small wounds.
Nessie, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Nessie: Nessies are mysterious beasts that lurk under the surface of your game. They manifest as social pressure not to make a fuss or drop out of a game, taking advantage of people’s reasonable desire for commitment and natural wish not to spoil things for others. When a Nessie emerges, a person suffering other monster attacks finds their escape cut off by sinewy scales, causing them social damage and increased exclusion if they try to flee. Nessies do not limit their prey; they often attack disabled adventurers or those with mental health conditions to manage.
Counterspells
There are monsters under my bed. When I was a child, I learned to use magic to fire lightning and create a shield. I reasoned this should work because the monsters were also imaginary.
Larps are spells. Larp is where we take our own stories and build new cultures and visions for how the world might be. Through this ritual we take them one step closer to reality.
This is a guide to some counterspells that can arm non-binary adventurers. If you are non-binary, I hope this gives you light and hope. If you are not, I hope you can use this guide to help you write, play, and run larps in ways that help combat the monsters we face daily.
Horn of Plenty, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Horn of Plenty: Just as some monsters team up, so can different adventurers, generating a nurturing feedback loop. Including other queer characters, having non-normative relationships, and combating sexism monsters in larps can invoke the Horn of Plenty, causing a feast of nourishment to flow for all. This effect is enhanced by placing these characters in positions of power; write non-binary heads of house, trans woman ruler in a polyamorous triad, and a pansexual and aromantic Grand Vizier.
Circle of Protection: An adventurer equipped with this spell possesses a magic shield that encircles them and holds back monsters. The Circle of Protection is invoked on the spot using safety words or prior to an adventure by writing a list of lines, and its use empowers an adventurer by offering them control over participating in certain themes and topics.
As Above, So Below: Sympathetic magic makes use of the way that ‘like produces like’, enacting changes in a representation that will also affect the real thing. In a larp, this can be invoked by writing explicitly non-binary or gender non-conforming characters into setting and character backgrounds in ways that deliberately offer new social dynamics and non-gendered roles. This spell can be boosted with subtle details in set dressing: costumes that mess with traditional gendered clothing, feminine motifs in the warrior enclave, masculine motifs at the woolmaking hearth, background music from queer subcultures.
Walking the Ways: An experienced adventurer can learn to slip between the cracks and into the Wild Ways, allowing them to traverse large distances quickly and avoid the monsters lurking there. You can enable this in a larp by calling down some essence of the Ways into your game. Write a game where gender neutrality is the norm; where queerness and gender fluidity is the default assumption; where gender weirdness is celebrated; where characters have different genders or no genders or extra genders.
Talisman of Sky, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Talisman of Sky: Air is a powerful element, one which fuels our breath and is associated with the mind and communication. Allow players to commune with their characters in whatever way their breath and connection takes them. You can invoke this in a larp by writing all characters as gender neutral and allowing players to choose their gender and pronouns. Many writers find this spell difficult to invoke; their minds want to impose their own gender habits, which hampers the Talisman. Think carefully before you gender a character, as almost no plots really require a specific gender identity.
Sigil of Earth: This element of growth and strength can be invoked if Sky is not possible. When writing a larp with pre-set character genders, plant the seeds for this spell by deliberately writing against cultural gender roles and including explicitly non-binary or intersex characters. Gender roles are very ingrained, and writers tend to use their culture’s ideas if they let their feet carry them without conscious intervention. (Try rolling a die after writing each character: 1-4, female; 5, intersex; 6, non-binary; 7-10, male.) When you cast, allow for players willing to play any gender, and do your first pass without knowing their identity and thus name or presentation.
Shadow Dancing: An adventurer can use movement mirroring a monster’s symbolic representation to form a spell that will strip them of their power. At your event, you can dance this by ensuring that procedures are the same for all genders: if game writers must specify the number of male or female characters, also ask how many characters are explicitly non-binary. If players can sign-up as male or female, allow them to sign-up explicitly as non-binary. If your venue has toilets that are provided specifically for men and for women, select one set and make them gender neutral (labelled with urinals or with sanitary bins).
Ritual of Transmutation: No adventurer steps out with immediate mastery of monster hunting skills. This ritual is best reinforced frequently, gradually allowing your powers to grow. This spell is invoked by using non-binary inclusive phrases at least three times in the mirror, with increasing intensity until you feel the spell begin to settle in your bones. Practice turns of phrase, pronouns, and forms of address. Check your writing, and if you’re not sure the spell is working, ask a friendly non-binary adventurer if they have time to look over your work – though adventurers may need to conserve energy for fighting monsters.
True Naming: Knowing someone’s true name grants power – knowing your own, more so. In a larp, you invoke this spell by building norms to always check pronouns, either visually (if there are badges) or verbally. When players sign up, don’t ask what their gender is; ask them instead what gender they would like to play and what pronouns their character should have. In your game, specify that the default pronoun is ‘they’ unless you have checked on a particular character’s pronouns. Use a clear and simple pronoun correction procedure, and have players practice it in a game workshop as they would any other mechanics.
Healing potion, illustration by Marcus Irgens
Healing Potion: This spell is created in advance, combining sacred herbs and hidden fruit in a potion to restore lost vitality. You can create one by taking the time to include Queer histories and media in your source material, supporting non-binary and transgender writers, uplifting LGBTQIA+ players in your community and giving them a voice – and importantly, listening to what they say. Sometimes people feel a shadow of the pain when they encounter a wounded adventurer speaking of their battles, and can unknowingly lash out at the adventurer instead of helping to fight the monster. The best response for you both is to offer the wounded adventurer a healing potion instead
Adventuring
There will always be monsters under the bed. Some of these will be of my own making.
I write and run games. I, too, inadvertently create monsters. As a wizard, I must research the side effects of my choices and try to modify my spellmaking accordingly. If we make an effort, we can perhaps band together as fellow adventurers of all kinds. We can share our spells and our vitality, and create a better fantasy land for all of us.
Will you come adventuring with me, and fight them together?
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
England, Rei. “Magic To Fight Monsters: Larp as a spell for claiming my spaces.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
Living is tough, especially when your identities are marginalised. Fortunately, we larpers are good at pretending we are the oppressors. Sometimes a bit too convincingly. This essay is for people who want to be confident at larp, or are struggling with impostor syndrome outside of larp: do not embrace your inner douchebag – let’s call him Jean-Michel((Please accept my humblest of apologies if your name is Jean-Michel.)) – but harness your inner Jean-Michel.
Warnings: mention of oppressions, cringe humor, impostor syndrome, thought-provoking
Le Jean-Michel Douchebag technique((As you can read, I am French.)) is the ultimate secret weapon to develop confidence, which is a concept I coined and can share with you at my exclusive immersive party for a keyholder discount of 57.99€ (about 1 or 2 Norwegian krones or whatnot). This is what my inner Jean-Michel would say. But I am not Jean-Michel, and you are not either. All the credit actually goes to writer Sarah Hagi’s tweet “God, give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude”. I added a twist.
“Fake it until you make it” is what you would read in personal development techniques, method acting, or pick-up artists’ twisted frameworks to ignore a woman’s consent. But all of these life rules seem to bend over backward, which seems just a tad counter-productive. If productivity is your concern for finding a way to express yourself, wouldn’t you rather directly explore who you are, what you like, or who you like? Yes? Then stop reading right now and go be yourself, don’t learn about le Jean-Michel Technique, do it for the sake of the utmost sacred neo-liberalist productivity!
Le Technique((It becomes obvious now I use footnotes for no logical reason whatsoever.))
Most cis-gender men are people. They are perceived and feel like men since they were born. Most artists I’ve worked with were not cisgender men, have a tendency to overperform while undermining themselves and unsurprisingly, have anxiety issues. They also have a common point: they all know someone who is the complete opposite, a cis-gender man of a someone, who does the same work they do but seems so entitled to everything that he gets infinitely more recognition. And he is not even that good.
Step 1: Think about someone that fits. Picture them as a character named Jean-Michel: he does exactly what you do, he is not better at your craft, but gets all the recognition, so what is it about him? Is it his hair? Is it confidence?
It is more than confidence, isn’t it? He is not an alpha dog,((Which is obvious, since the alpha dog theory is scientifically inaccurate.)) he is no Brad Pitt, he does not even know why people give fucks. He is spontaneous, reckless, a bit dumb: he is Jean-Michel, an ignorant douchebag, this era’s hero. Jean-Michel feels he is your friend. Everybody’s friend. And one does not ask his friends for permission.
Step 2: Push forward: Jean-Michel gets his inspiration from you. He takes your thing, and produces a half-baked bland version without a soul, but gets thousands of recognition likes for it.((We are not even in the realm of caricature yet, unfortunately.)) What belief allows him to firmly assert he came up with it? Why does anyone believe him?
“You can do absolutely anything”, said his parents to Jean-Michel. And he did not only believe it for himself, but also for everyone else. So he took your work and changed a detail or two? If he is even aware it originated from you, he thinks it is some kind of hommage, a win-win situation, you know.((In French we have a saying: “Idiots are daring; that’s how you notice them.” (Michel Audiard).))
Step 3: Act like it. In every matter small or large, think: what would Jean-Michel do? If you did not care about someone’s reaction, how would you phrase your e-mail? If you did not care whether your essay is good or not, would you submit it?
Finding your inner douchebag is easy. Making them as realistic as a Jean-Michel may be a bit trickier. Now that you can dramatically be horrible to others by your mere daring presence, you can choose to take things a bit further. You can choose to ask yourself how this could help transform your life.
Step 4: Who would want to be a Jean-Michel? Dig into what makes him different from you. Be specific. What does he dare to do or to say? What does he believe? And most importantly: what is his relation to others?
Jean-Michel is a hero. He has immense bravery, faith in his values, and he triumphs alone despite all the haters. Let’s not be Jean-Michel. Let’s embrace our insecurities, keep open hearts and minds, and share with others. This is a dialogue.
Step 5: Why are you apologising for rejecting this amazing free work opportunity? Would Jean-Michel be sorry? No, he would print that e-mail, shit on it, and send it baked in girl scout cookies. You won’t do that, but you won’t apologise either.
In summary, harnessing your inner Jean-Michel is doing an inner voice larping, a dialogue between a douchebag inspired by someone you know of and yourself, a kind of devil on your shoulder. It can be liberating yourself from Western society’s imposed self-censorship, self-doubt, and impostor syndrome amongst marginalised people.
Too Cringe, Didn’t Read: Please Be Explicit
What inspired me is being socially awkward my entire life. Passing for a cisgender white heterosexual guy, I have tried to be that at work, to be Jean-Michel. I have purposefully learned how to show confidence during a job interview, and to invade people’s personal spaces to assert virility. These were the rules. But faking it does not make it. I remained queer and later, I got quite the opposite advice. It was unfortunately the most practical and useful one I ever got: if you want to blend in at work, act like you are scared, all the time. Sadly, fear is always the safest answer.
You can read this essay as a workshop for larp, a thought-provoking provoking manifesto against heroism, or a practical exercise for marginalised people to foster discussion about privilege and oppression. Or just as my inner Jean-Michel’s production, because if I have been able to publish this, you can do anything.
Bibliography
Jonaya Kemper “Wyrding the Self.” In What Do We Do When We Play?, edited by Eleanor Saitta, Jukka Särkijärvi, and Johanna Koljonen. Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta, 2020.
Axelle Cazeneuve, Mélanie Dorey, Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, Dorothée Lambert. And to all the douchebags out there.
Cover photo: Image by Gregory Hayes on Pexels.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Freudenthal, Michael. “Le Jean-Michel Douchebag Technique.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
The therapeutic potential of larp has been discussed in a growing body of literature. Elektra Diakolambrianou (2021) presented a wide-ranging overview of this connection in general. For good reason she is (amongst others) focusing on drama therapy by Jacob Moreno. Despite the fact that larp and drama therapy share a kind of common history, the research on that connection has only unfolded in recent years (Burns 2014, Fatland 2016, Linnamäki 2019, Mendoza 2020).
In this article, larp will be discussed from the perspective of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is not a typical larp approach on the first glimpse. But due to the important standing of CBT in empirical research and public healthcare, this point of view appears to be worthwhile. In the second half of this article, a prototype of a CBT larp is presented, which is part of a research project by the author in cooperation with Tagrid Leménager (Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim).
Why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
When you are establishing a new therapeutic method in the healthcare system, you have to prove the effectiveness of this method (Edejer et al. 2003). This requirement concerns somatic interventions as well as psychotherapeutic ones. CBT is one of the best examined psychotherapeutic approaches (Butler et al. 2006) and therefore an important part of healthcare all over the world. The question of effectiveness becomes crucial in healthcare systems in countries like Germany, where CBT is one of only four accepted therapy approaches that are paid by public insurance. It is important to note that the following considerations do not assume that CBT is the “best” method (which unfortunately is often portrayed as such), but only one of the most important methods from a health economics perspective. On the other hand, role-playing has always been a popular technique in CBT (Fliegel 2020). So it is easy to argue from a technical point of view that larp and CBT are “good companions.” Ultimately, however, I also deal with this method because I am a CBT therapist myself and an active larper.
So in the following, this article focuses on CBT aspects in larp. A general overview of relevant psychological processes and mechanisms in larp has already been presented very well elsewhere. The Event Series of the Transformative Play Initiative from the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University is particularly recommended (Uppsala Universitet, 2022).
Role-play in CBT in General
So what role-play techniques are present in CBT in everyday clinical work?
The basic goal of CBT is the training of helpful and desired behavior. These can be very different types of target behaviors. For example, a client with social anxiety may have the target behavior of being able to speak freely in front of a group or to speak to other people without feeling ashamed. A person with dog phobia will have the behavioral goal of walking past dogs without crossing the street; (the latter would be avoidance in CBT terms). A depressed person will likely aim to get up in the morning and engage in activities that bring them pleasure and motivation.
There are some basic techniques in CBT to train target behavior. Role-playing games are an important element because they are experience-oriented. In contrast to psychoanalysis, for example, which mainly takes place “on the couch,” in CBT, corrective experiences should be made directly in the therapy session. Of course, that is not entirely correct, because in psychoanalysis, too, the client is motivated to transfer their findings to “real life” and to practice the desired behavior there. In classical analysis, however, this practice is not a direct part of the therapy session, in contrast to CBT. CBT has the perspective that corrective experiences should always be made on a cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral/motor level, because these can be expected to result in maximum therapeutic success. Martin Cierjacks (2002) explains that larp is suitable as a psychological method precisely for this reason, namely the interlocking of these levels. He therefore has used larp as a method in organizational team training.
It seems useful to distinguish three types of CBT approaches relevant to a therapeutic larp. These are presented below, with a reference to where they play a role in therapeutic larp.
Role-play in Group Therapy
In group therapy, the role-play in CBT is mainly carried out according to the following pattern (Fliegel 2020): A client in the group describes a problem situation from their everyday life, e.g., “How can I say ‘no’ better, when my boss asks me to do extra tasks?” Then a suitable scene is worked out together. The client acts out the scene (with the other clients or the therapist as the interaction partner). Then there is feedback from the group on the client’s behavior. Alternative behavior is then discussed. The client then plays the same scene again and then there is feedback from the group again.
In CBT it has (so far) been customary to use specific treatment manuals for specific mental disorders. So-called skills training programs exist in the area of therapeutic role-play in the group setting. Well known programs are, for example, the Assertiveness Training Program (ATP) (Ullrich et al. 2002) or the Gruppentraining sozialer Kompetenzen (GSK) (group training of social skills) (Hinsch et al. 2015). The latter is very widespread in German speaking countries and is part of the standard repertoire of the CBT there. The GSK also provides a problem analysis and then suitable role-plays in the group as core components. The authors differentiate between three types of training situations for the therapeutic role-play:
Enforcing one’s rights,
Social competence in relationships, and
Courting sympathy.
The GSK is particularly interesting to mention (and also serves as a reference for the CBT larp outlined below), because it is a well-evaluated standard method, is versatile, and reduces all social training situations to three topics, which is very helpful for the design of a CBT larp. In GSK — as in CBT in general — therapists and clients repeatedly assess how well the target behavior has already been achieved and what can still be improved after individual therapy sections (more on this below).
It is also important to mention that we are not the first to relate the concept of social skills – as understood in the GSK – to larp and we are not the first who see larp as a good training method for this. Myriel Balzer (2008) has published a book that is widely known in German-speaking countries and that focuses on this connection. Additionally, the larp-related thesis of Franz Aschenbrenner (2013) is explicitly based on the GSK. And there are already groups that realize similar concepts, e.g. ECW event (with their hero coaching approach for children and young people), but without it being intended as therapy (ECW Jugendbildung e.V., n.d.).
There is also a broad community of therapists who use tabletop roleplay, with a focus on social skills and related topics. The Geek Therapeutics initiative, for example, should be mentioned here, which offers material on the therapeutic use of role-playing games and even offers courses for certification as a geek therapist (Leyline Education 2020). Other groups that train social skills in the context of tabletop roleplay are Mastermind Adventures with their Quest! program (Mastermind Adventures LLC n.d.); the non-profit Game to Grow, which developed in cooperation the game Critical Core (Game to Grow n.d.); and The Bodhana Group (n.d.). These training programs and games have developed rapidly in recent years and reached a wide audience, but as said, they use the medium of tabletop role-playing games.
So far, however, there is no CBT larp concept with a focus on social skills complemented and quantitatively evaluated in a standardized way, as far as I know.
The author in preparatory talk with a client.
Role-play in a Psychotherapeutic One-on-One Session
The CBT role-play in the individual setting is very similar to that in the group setting (Fliegel 2020). A problem analysis should also be carried out first, then target behavior should be worked out, and then the client practices this target behavior in role-play with the therapist. The difference is that in the one-on-one setting, only the therapist gives feedback, although support through video recordings of the session is also possible. A therapeutic 1:1 setting is also possible in larp, for example if a therapist accompanies a client to a convention and acts as a permanent contact person. Other scenarios are conceivable here. A method for a small group is presented below, which is why the 1:1 setting is not further explored here.
Behavior Experiment and Exposure Training
Exposure exercises and behavioral experiments are the modern terms for the form of exercise commonly known as confrontation therapy (Kaczkurkin et al. 2015). The latter term is no longer used today in CBT, because it is not about mere confrontation (since that would mean that the client simply endures a fearful situation). Rather, exposure is about experiencing an active management of your fear. One mechanism behind exposure is habituation (I get used to the anxiety-provoking situation after a certain amount of time) (Mühling et al. 2011) and the statement: “I can cope with the situation if I don’t avoid it.”.
Very similar is the behavioral experiment: Before the therapist visits a fearful situation with the client, the client’s (fearful) concerns are collected and written down. Example: “If I give a presentation in front of a group, the audience will laugh at me.” A corresponding situation is then sought out and the client checks whether or not their fears are real. In this way, negative belief systems can be gradually changed. In CBT-oriented larp, the procedure is very similar. Together with the therapist, the client considers a target behavior. Then, a player-character is created that matches that target behavior. And then the client performs that behavior over time in their role. Due to the fact that a larp lasts several hours, a habituation effect as in the exposure exercise should occur at some point. And as in the behavioral experiment, the client is also instructed to check how others react to their behavior, whether their fears come true, or how the new target behavior feels in general.
Let’s take a fictitious client as an example of what this can look like in a larp therapy session: Lily is quite shy in real life. She finds it difficult to stand by her needs in private life and to demand her rights. She always puts the wishes of her partner, family members, and friends above her own wishes. And even in professional life, she can hardly say “no” to her boss, which is why she often does more work than her colleagues. A possible target behavior that Lily can train in (larp) therapy is “say no and stand up for my rights.” In preparation, Lily works out this target behavior with the therapist. Fears that Lily has are then also discussed. For example, Lily might think, “Other people will reject me if I say no to what they want,” or “I can’t assert my needs anyway.” These are negative assumptions. Together with the therapist and the larp therapy group, Lily then looks at which role-playing character goes well with this target behavior. In other words, “Which character already masters the target behavior very well that I want to practice?” In Lily’s case, that can be a shieldmaiden. So, with the help of the therapist and the group, Lily designs a shieldmaiden that she wants to play, who is very self-confident, always takes what she needs, and only goes into the wishes of others when it suits her. Let’s call this shieldmaiden Gudrun. Lily then plays Gudrun in the therapeutic larp and has in mind, “I say no if someone wants to take advantage of me and I stand up for my rights.” It is now her task to observe her fears:
“Do others really reject me in my role as Gudrun?” and
“How does it feel to behave this way and have a corrective experience?”
(Remember: Lily’s self-image was that she can’t assert her needs anyway). How all this can be organized in a therapeutic Larp is explained below in the description of the individual sessions.
In addition, role-playing in CBT can also be used more generally as a diagnostic tool to observe how clients react to difficult situations (Bellack et al. 1990). The problem analysis in the CBT larp described here, however, proceeds differently, as will be shown below.
Other Relevant CBT Terms
Conditioning and reinforcement: The concept of conditioning should be familiar to many people in its simplest form from Pavlov’s dog (Kohler 1962). Another form of conditioning that is more relevant to therapeutic larp is operant conditioning, most notably made famous by Burrhus F. Skinner (Staddon and Cerutti 2003). The basic concept is: By reinforcing desired behavior, it will be more likely to occur again in the future. In CBT larp, this trivial fact is very important: Clients should be given some kind of reward for acting out their target behavior if possible, be it through an appreciative remark from an NPC or even game-relevant effects. An example: If a shy client dares to repeatedly approach strange NPCs in their role and speak to them, they solve the plot very quickly and successfully. At best, they get recognition from NPCs and other players (social reinforcement) and e.g. gold or a powerful sword from the NPCs (material reinforcement). This motivates the client to approach other people openly in the future.
Goal Attainment Scaling: The so-called Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) (Kiresuk et al. 2014) is a relatively simple way of presenting goal achievement in written/graphic form. A similar method is used in CBT larp. In psychology, a graded assessment is generally called Likert scale (Joshi et al. 2015), e.g., “How often do you think about your larp character and their behavior in everyday life on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 5 (always)?”
And now summarized again: What is CBT? And (how) does it differ from drama therapy?
Benefits of CBT
CBT has certain basic characteristics that probably most therapists and researchers could agree on:
CBT is highly structured. This means that as a therapist I should always have a plan as to which goal I am pursuing in today’s session and with which methods. This distinguishes CBT from some other forms of therapy, such as psychoanalysis, where the basic rule is free association (Lothane 2018), which means that the client should basically say whatever comes to mind and the therapist may pick up on that and interpret it.
In the CBT, we treat disorders specifically. Therefore, there are a large number of treatment manuals for all possible mental disorders. These specialist books have very specific instructions that are designed to guide you from the diagnosis process until the end of therapy in such a way that you can work through them from start to finish. CBT therapists are still learning to do psychotherapy this way in their training. Therefore, it is also our concern in the project described below to offer our standardized CBT larp for other therapists to use. However, one should point out two things:
In clinical reality, hardly any therapist works through a treatment manual word for word from A to Z.
There is a strong development in CBT towards a much more individualized psychotherapy, so-called process-based CBT (Hayes et al. 2017). Its advocates indicate that the classic treatment manual could be replaced more and more by the new approach.
CBT is evidence-based and verifiable with empirical data. As described at the beginning, CBT is also so successful because it is “easily illustrated in figures.” For this reason, a CBT larp that can be evaluated empirically is also desirable, if it is to be paid for by health insurance companies in the future, for example. So much for the supply reality. Critics say that CBT is so successful in quantitative studies because:
Many therapists who are also active in research are CBT therapists; and
Many CBT concepts can be easily measured quantitatively (e.g. with the mentioned Likert scale), whereas in psychoanalysis or drama therapy, such measurements are not conceptually provided. One could say quantitative measurements do not necessarily correspond to the “spirit” of the therapy.
CBT vs. Drama Therapy
What is the difference between CBT and drama therapy? There really is no sensible dividing line for this. Some authors have gone so far as to say that role-playing in CBT was actually just adopted from drama therapy (Fliegel 2020). This is a typical accusation against CBT: it would incorporate foreign techniques and call them CBT. A former supervisor of mine used to say, “CBT is therefore an imperialist school of therapy.” Other authors suggest deliberately using mixtures of drama therapy and CBT (Hamamci 2006).
Ultimately, CBT and drama therapy are just different approaches to very similar problems. Both use different terms and have slightly different basic assumptions. Because of the three basic properties mentioned, we consider CBT to be a very helpful form of therapy that is easy to scientifically examine and that can be easily combined with other media such as larp. Because of these specific properties, we believe that a specific look at larp from the CBT perspective can be worthwhile.
The portal around which much of the game revolves.
How to Larp in CBT: A Prototype
In 2020, in cooperation with Tagrid Leménager from the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, I started to develop a CBT larp and to make preparations for its empirical evaluation. During the preparation, we had contact in particular with German academics that use larp as an educational or psychological tool, including Katrin Geneuss, Martin Cierjacks, Myriel Balzer, and Franz Aschenbrenner.
As explained earlier, a hallmark of CBT is that it is highly structured. This has the advantage that a precise concept can be used in the same way by different therapists. In addition, if you have a guide in the form of a treatment manual, you can carry out several runs of the therapeutic larp and always improve small details. Another advantage of a standardized manual is that it is much easier to obtain data that is as comparable as possible for the evaluation because you can use the data to compare individual larp events and individual clients.
We would like to present the most important cornerstones of our CBT larp here. We would also like to motivate other health professionals to gain their own experience with it.
CBT Larp as Group Therapy in 6 Steps
The CBT larp is designed like group therapy with up to 6 clients. There should be 6 sessions, of which 5 sessions have the usual length of a group therapy session, i.e. about 90 minutes. One session is the larp intervention, which is designed for 5 hours. Only one therapist needs to be present in the preparatory and follow-up sessions. In the following text this person is referred to as the therapist. The other members of the therapist team are game masters and can be, but do not have to be psychotherapists, as described below.
Session 1
In the first session, a problem analysis is carried out for each individual client. A recurring problem in everyday life is thus specified. These can be difficult social situations (“I always find it hard to say no when a friend asks for a favor”), but they can also be, for example, difficulties in giving oneself a daily structure, as occurs for example in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We already had both constellations of problems in test runs.
The problem analysis takes place in the group setting, using the example of a client. A standardized questionnaire that we developed for this purpose is used to support this (see Appendix I). Points are written on it such as “Problem analysis in keywords: What do I find difficult in everyday life? What do I want to change?” or “For the game section, I plan to try the following behavior…” The clients also get the worksheets to take home to continue as homework.
At the end of this session, a therapeutic role-play takes place for demonstration purposes, not in the larp setting, but in the way known from GSK or ATP.
In addition, clinical questionnaires are distributed to make any successes visible to each individual client, but also to enable scientific evaluation.
Session 2
First there is a debriefing of the previous lesson and a discussion of the homework; if necessary, we provide assistance in formulating goals. Then the therapeutic rationale of CBT larp is explained and the basics of live action role-playing, because we assume that most clients have no experience with this. This is important to emphasize at this point: we want to use a method here that is not only aimed at role-players. (If the clients then become role-players, all the better).
There should also be a distinction made between larp and therapeutic larp (not just recreational fun, but with a therapeutic objective). The connection to the role-play from the previous sessions is explained: “Trying out and experiencing is elementary for the learning process!” Then there is a basic explanation of important game mechanics: explanation of in-game time and out-of-game time, setting a safe word, and the procedure for when a player wants to fold temporarily or is taken out by the therapist or a co-therapist. The group then discusses together where clients can build on their interests or previous knowledge, e.g., fantasy literature/series/films, video games, pen-and-paper role-playing games.
The next big point is the creation of the larp character. Together we reflect: How can I create a larp character that suits my development goals? For example, for social anxiety: creating a bold, daring character. The second section of the output worksheets is designed for this. The setting of the forthcoming larp is briefly explained.
We have found it helpful at this point to provide an illustrated list of archetypes loosely adapted from C.G. Jung (1990) and to state, for example, “If you want to practice reckless behavior, play the wild warrior.” Whitney “Strix” Beltrán (2012, 2013) has written some articles that are well worth reading, which also explain the connection between larp characters and archetypal theory. Clients can often more easily transfer their development goal to a specific character this way. For example, if I have set myself the goal of acting much more assertively in everyday life, then an archetypal “wild warrior” can help me to get an idea of how an offensive larp character can be. For example by asking myself: From which films, games or books do I know this archetype? I might think of King Leonidas from 300. And then I finally base my acting on this character. White et al. (2017) found in a study of young children that imagining oneself as an archetypal character (in the study it was Batman) was enough to change one’s behavior towards that character.
Clients take the worksheets home at the session’s end to continue writing their character.
Session 3
The character arcs are discussed afterwards and possible difficulties are clarified. There should be a few minutes of rehearsal role-play with the characters, with the therapist presenting a small conflict scene that could occur in a larp setting. Our rehearsal situation: The therapist plays a guard in front of a gate and one of the clients is given the task of convincing the gate guard to let him through. Here it is already clear that a barbarian likely will choose a different path than a magician.
The most important rules are now repeated again and a (very short!) written set of rules is issued. The safe word is repeated and the course of the game is presented. Organizational points are clarified.
There is also a section on the trigger analysis on the worksheets: “I definitely don’t want to experience the following (e.g. triggers, phobias…)” This is now explained separately by the therapist. In our dealings with the topic so far, it has been shown that clients have good spontaneous access to what they indicate here. It is quite possible to “talk about a trauma without talking about the trauma,” which means that even in therapeutic larp, the therapist and other clients do not necessarily have to know why someone does not want to experience certain things. It is only important that the client can write this down here. It is at the discretion of the therapist to discuss the trigger analysis again with the client in a one-on-one session.
Most professionals who are using larp as a therapeutic tool say that the depiction of violence should be restricted in a therapeutic larp. We also assume that. “Dramaturgically sensible” combat with foam weapons is okay, but torture or sexual violence are to be ruled out as a matter of principle. But not so clear is the question among therapists of whether triggers should be consciously activated in therapeutic larps or not. Our position is that only those triggers that have been pre-determined as therapeutic targets, or at least have not been excluded, should be activated. In concrete terms, this usually means that triggers are an important part of the game when a client wants to overcome fears, e.g., when they say, “Whenever someone speaks harshly to me, I fall silent.” Here we have a kind of activation (harsh response) that can be usefully processed in the CBT larp. However, it seems inappropriate to us to activate a trigger in the sense of a post-traumatic stress disorder in the CBT larp, because this exceeds the capacity of the setting.
Since, despite a trigger analysis, it sometimes happens that triggers are accidentally activated in therapeutic larp. Here is a tip: The therapist/game master, who always accompanies the group, must be a trained psychotherapist with group experience, who also feels competent enough to deal with such situations professionally. In our concept, this will be the same therapist at the larp itself, who also did the preparation sessions with the clients.
In extreme cases, “acting professionally” means that the therapist has knowledge of how to deal with a dissociating patient if a trigger was accidentally activated. And in general, “professional behavior” can also affect the therapeutic relationship. In all off-game situations, we recommend maintaining the same distance from the client that we have in a normal therapeutic setting. This is a challenge because we are nevertheless “playing” a game with the client when we do therapeutic larp.
Session 4
Session 4 is the actual larp intervention and, therefore, at around five hours, is significantly longer than the preparatory and follow-up sessions. Here are my impressions of a CBT larp that we carried out in Summer 2021 and that we will repeat in a similar form in the coming months and years. The venue is a rented piece of forest in Northern Germany.
Game Master/Therapist: There is a game master who accompanies the group at all times. This is also the therapist who led the sessions previously. In the following, however, the term therapist is used instead of game master. The therapist must have a qualification as a behavioral therapist as described and sufficient experience with groups. In addition, a little larp experience should be available in order to control in-game processes. The therapist always keeps in mind the clients’ goals, gos, and no-gos.
NPCs/Co-Therapists: All non-playable characters in a CBT larp are co-therapists. In the CBT larp we developed, three of these are required. A fourth co-therapist is helpful, but not absolutely necessary. In any case, these should be people with a therapeutic or educational background. They do not have to have any larp experience, but they must have been instructed in the CBT larp method. There is a written guide for co-therapists for this. Our experience so far is that this is also important in order to clarify the basic principles of CBT to the co-therapists, in particular the principle of exposure, which initially seems inappropriately “harsh” to people in other helping professions. At best, the co-therapists are already present in the group sessions beforehand. In our previous work, it was sufficient that the co-therapists received a brief overview with the names of the clients, their characters, their behavioral goals, and their no-gos, triggers, etc.
Initial setting: The initial situation for the clients is that they accidentally trigger a magical trap when they enter an unfamiliar forest. They can no longer leave the forest; it will gradually become contaminated and everything living in it will die on the same day. The CBT larp genre is classic medieval fantasy. Clients have no restrictions on their character choices here, as long as they are not unduly powerful.
Plot: After a few meters, the clients meet the therapist, who then accompanies them intimately the whole time. He plays Björn, a local villager. He enlightens the clients about the threat that has now been created and indicates that the clients should come along to his friend Svante, who knows a little more about the magic trap. From now on, the clients play at several stations and solve classic adventure quests. The common thread here is that the clients have to earn clues and artifacts from the inhabitants of the forest in order to get out of the forest alive. The rescue is a portal through which they have to step to get out of the closed forest.
Without going into too much detail, a concept that has already been described should be taken up, namely the three exercise situations from the GSK. The situations in which the co-therapists appear in our CBT larp correspond to at least two categories of the GSK. There is an elf queen whose sympathy the clients have to acquire (corresponding to GSK situation 3). Later, a situation with the same elf occurs in which the clients can defend themselves against being punished disproportionately for accidentally infecting the forest (GSK situation 1). It should be noted here that a client whose character has the goal of “more adjustment in the group” will behave completely differently than one who “always wants to stand by himself and his needs.”
One long quest involves clients seeking amulets that match their particular in-game behavioral goals. In our experience, these amulets have three advantages:
Symbolization of the therapy content, so that what has been learned can be remembered for a long time;
Positive reinforcement (as described, this increases the probability that the practiced behavior will be shown again); and
Enabling the players to evaluate what has already been achieved.
In our CBT larp, the amulets had a similar function to goal attainment scaling (see above). At the moment when all clients have earned a suitable amulet, a magic test takes place (performed by the therapist). The amulets can only be put on if the respective client has already shown some of his/her target behavior in his/her role. If, according to the therapist’s assessment, this has not happened in the previous game, he explains that the client still has the chance to try out the target behavior for a while. The task of the therapist is now to support that particular client in implementing the target behavior.
At the end of the CBT larp, clients have the opportunity to exit the forest through the portal. We have found that it is perfectly appropriate not to let individual clients “win” too easily. Nevertheless, the group should finally master the last quest (escape from the forest). Therapists and co-therapists can help a little here.
Debriefing: Almost all authors who write about therapeutic larp are of the opinion that the debriefing actually makes a larp therapeutic (e.g. Diakolambrianou 2021) and it fundamentally contributes to emotional safety (Bowman 2014). We are also convinced that a good debriefing is essential for transfer to real life to support what we call bleed-out in the larp community (see also Montola 2010). The CBT larp therefore ends with a ritual in which the characters say goodbye to one another and a meta perspective is taken (de-roling process).
Then all clients meet again in a round with the therapist and the co-therapists. Everyone fills out an initial evaluation form, which also includes target achievement (in the form of Likert scales). Then, there is a round of debriefing in which all clients report how they experienced themselves in the game and whether they feel that they have practiced their target behavior. Then, there is feedback from the therapist, co-therapists, and the other clients. The amulets may be taken home as a symbol to remember the larp.
The players have to activate the portal. When they have achieved their behavioral goals, they can step through to the end of the game and the debriefing begins on the other side.
Some Thoughts on the Plot
In developing the CBT larp, we were of the opinion that a great deal of external pressure had to be exerted on the characters. This is especially true because, in most cases, the characters of the clients will exhibit very different attitudes, goals, and behaviors. In our opinion, a scenario is therefore necessary that builds up a certain pressure to cooperate. Based on previous test runs, it is our assessment that it is possible to design a therapeutic larp that can cover many different therapeutic goals through its plot and is not only suitable for one or two specific target areas, e.g., increasing empathy.
Which CBT techniques were included? In the described session 4, several of the techniques mentioned above can be found. Clients experience exposure to behavior that is foreign to them. They conduct behavioral experiments and can compare their fears with the actual reactions of those around them. Dysfunctional cognitions and basic assumptions are changed through corrective experiences. Reinforcement strengthens new behavior. And as described, the therapist is not only there to step in in an emergency. We have found that — insofar as the clients are basically stable — the therapists’ main task is to remind the clients of their behavioral goals and to give them tips on how to implement specific behavior in the game, for example: “Why are you actually carrying the luggage for the crew? Aren’t you a snooty nobleman?” This also parallels the role of the CBT therapist in an exposure exercise: to nudge clients repeatedly in the direction of the agreed-upon target behavior.
Session 5 and Session 6
Two more group therapy sessions off-game then follow as soon as possible after the larp intervention. Here it is discussed again which target behavior could be maintained and taken into everyday life and at which points the clients still have difficulties. Finally, the hobby of larp should also be “advertised” again, since we generally assume that leisure time larp also can be a healing resource (Lehto 2021).
Indications and Contraindications
We assume that CBT larp is basically suitable for all people with mild to moderate mental illnesses. Above all, however, larp is useful in the case of disorders that are based on problems in the areas of social skills and self-esteem. Contraindications are serious psychiatric disorders such as psychosis or severe depression. In our current research project, we have focused on Internet addiction because it often correlates with deficits in social self-concept (Leménager et al. 2020). At the same time, the larp setting could particularly appeal to MMORPG-dependent people who, according to the research, are otherwise often difficult to motivate for therapy.
Limitations and Difficulties
In our previous work with CBT larp, we noticed two difficulties:
Clients who intend to play strong and extraverted characters in particular benefit from this behavior in the game. Anyone who decides to become more reserved must be very actively rewarded by the therapist and co-therapist.
The larp intervention is very short to practice the new behavior. It is much longer than classic role-playing games in CBT and drama therapy, which is why we also believe in its effectiveness. But for the method to be successful in the long term, the larp intervention should be embedded in longer psychotherapy.
One aspect that I discussed in advance in a conversation with Katrin Geneuss from STAR Manufaktur (STARS-Projekt 2022) also remains to be critically examined: Just because we as larp enthusiasts think larp (as a method) is great does not mean it is for everyone who has not have contact with it before. In addition, the aspect of economic efficiency must always be considered. Therefore, the larp described here is designed so that it can be carried out relatively easily by a typical team in a psychotherapy clinic with one licensed therapist and three other therapists such as art therapists or sports therapists.
The Research Project
Finally, our research project should be briefly presented. As explained at the beginning, a medical treatment method must provide evidence of non-inferiority to other methods in order to be accepted in the public health system. From our point of view, CBT larp should not become a completely independent method, but should be used as part of CBT treatments as one of several techniques, e.g., in a rehabilitation clinic or in long-term behavioral therapy. Other techniques have already succeeded in doing this, such as mindfulness-based methods, by evaluating them as effective (see e.g. Raj et al. 2019).
We are currently conducting CBT larps and investigating whether the larp intervention reduces the severity of symptoms in mental disorders. For this purpose, the clients fill out established questionnaires from clinical psychology before and after the intervention. This then happens again several months after the larp. It is a so-called pre-post research design with follow-up examination. In this way, we want to carry out both individual case studies and larger quantitative comparative studies in the coming years. We are convinced that larp is an enrichment for psychotherapy and look forward to cooperation with other larp therapists.
Notes at the End
As a psychologist, I am used to two prejudices. These also fit the CBT larp theme.
“Psychology psychologizes everything simply because it can.” It is important for me to emphasize that larp continues to be primarily a leisure activity for me. In my opinion, it is a stroke of luck that larp can also be used as a therapy method. And it is logical that it can work, as I hope this article has shown. In the long term, however, I am of the opinion that a different term should perhaps be coined for this in order to distinguish it from recreational larp, just as Katrin Geneuss does with her educational larp (Geneuss 2019, 282).
“Psychology only examines what we already know anyway.” In the case of CBT larp, this is definitely true for larpers. Elektra Diakolambrianou writes very appropriately, “the fact that larp has psychotherapeutic and transformative potential is certainly not an arcane knowledge in the larp world” (Diakolambrianou 2021). In order to establish larp as a method in the long term, it is still important to prove its effectiveness.
References
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The smell of candles and chalk mingles with the scent of brimstone and incense as shadows dance around the geometric patterns of the sigil inscribed on the floor. In the center of which stands the looming figure of the infernal patron you wish to appease, its ancient name transcribed onto a scroll from the book of diabolical knowledge you keep by your side. You smile. The Demon smiles. You both know that this is exactly the point at which things get interesting.
Summoning demons is often given a bad reputation by people who do not appreciate the rare and special gifts given to us by the agents of the infernal. Rarely are we given an opportunity to cause chaos and calamity on a scale that will satisfy our need for destruction, and demons never fail to satisfy. They are fun, dangerous, and extremely good value for money. You can achieve a lot on your own; you can achieve a lot more with the aid of a diabolic patron.
For many of us the days of summoning looming monsters to fight off knights with swords are behind us. We live slightly more refined lives of hotel lobbies and hidden manor houses. Armies of the damned have been largely replaced with cults dedicated to sex and death, and our demon summoning practices have moved along with it. Where once we may have led rituals to summon vast diabolical monsters to fight armies, we now look for something more subtle, more pervasive.
That is not to say there is not a time and a place for an actual physical manifestation of supernatural malign intent; it certainly adds spice to any basement supplication orgy, we can assure you. These days we are more inclined to want to summon manifestation of demonic interference into our own chosen vessels. Today we explore the alternatives to creating physical gateways into hell dimensions and focus instead on the subtle arts of accepting evil into our soul.
Masks and Personas
Playing a character can be hard enough on its own without all of the extra baggage of supernatural possession. Even those who play thinly veiled versions of themselves wearing funny hats have to put some work into attempting to portray a personality that is different to themselves, even if they always seem to be roughly the same. Once we allow ourselves to become possessed, the demonic entity —cool as they may be— is an extra layer of complication we need to prepare for.
We suggest that having a clear understanding of the difference between the character you are portraying and the possession can help you be clear in how you are going to portray your new, even more exciting alibi for bad behaviour. Take the time to meditate on the persona of the character you are playing and the persona of the demon that you are handing over control to. The differences between the two are the things that are going to stand out the most so make a note of those differences and play the hell out of them! If you’ll pardon the expression.
Once you have a clear idea of those personality differences you can allow the demon to take up some residency in your own soul. Try to embody the physicality of the demon and how they will move your meat vessel through this world of exciting opportunities for evil. Don’t be embarrassed! Your demon is perfectly equipped to take the blame for all manner of absurd postures and walking gaits you decide to adopt. What will help is having a clear idea of the internal rhythm and tempo of the demon.
We will often repeat the name of the demon in our heads at a speed that suits the creature. Once we feel our thought processes match the tempo of the demon we can let ourselves go and allow the demon to run riot, which they will, every time. The important question is “How quickly?” For the more somnolent demons you can slow your pace down and adjust your breathing to match, lazily opening your eyes when your inner languid evil is ready to face the world. For a more galvanic transition into easily excited or hyperactive demons you can repeat the name in your head, speeding up with each repetition until you have no choice but to open your eyes with a scream.
A substantially different tempo and rhythm will often work on its own to emphasise the difference between demon and host, but we still need to be able to interact with other people. Being very clear about what the demon wants and how they want to get it helps us emphasise the differences between the host and the demon. The demon will rarely be that bothered by the impact of its desires on its host and will exploit the possession ruthlessly. This is your opportunity to create a catastrophic mess that will take hours for you to fix once the demon is done with you. Enjoy it while it lasts and feast on the mayhem. Don’t forget to cry when your character realises what the demon made them do; or at least pretend to be sad.
Circles and Words
The ritual is an important part of the process of allowing demons into your heart. Taking the time to prepare properly gives you the time to make sure that you are ready to channel multiple character personas at once. It also helps with the immersion into the roles if you have some sort of ceremony that can help focus your mind. These ceremonies do not need to be elaborate but having some sort of process can make the whole thing a little easier by giving you time to really think about what it is you will be doing once the ritual is complete.
Small cards, scrolls and books can be useful reminders of key information about the demons you are inhabiting if that is required. Usually the only thing that matters is how the demon changes the persona of your character, so you will only need some things to do while you are getting ready to perform the transformation. Establishing a space in which you can sit in order to do the summoning is a good start, with or without a circle of some sort. You can then close your eyes and effectively perform a diegetic workshop in which you welcome the new spiritual intruder into your heart and soul.
Turning our own body into a physical vessel for the transubstantiated soul of a malevolent spirit is thirsty work and not something to be undertaken lightly. Make sure you hydrate and take breaks if you need to. Once you have mastered the art of the single possession there are other exciting opportunities that await those looking to surrender their bodies to the dark powers. A straightforward possession is draining and difficult, but with enough preparation you can expand your demonic entourage to multiple demonic interventions.
Possession, Legion and Pandemonium
Legion is the practice of being inhabited by many demons. You may not know the names of all of the demons you have allowed to inhabit your soul, but this should not stop you from enjoying the experience. We have found it helpful to always remain aware of the tempo of the various demons to keep track of how they interact with people. Your somnolent demons will keep a slow, regular pace with their interactions, interrupted by lively galvanic demons who can burst into your interactions with screams and outbursts.
Play on the differences between them, occasionally letting out bursts of grief, outrage and upset from the shattered remains of your original character. There does not need to be many of them, two or three is typical, but don’t let that stop you from implying that there are many more in there. Make sure that amidst the chaos you are staying calm and in control yourself. When you need to take a break do so. I have never been in a situation where I am channeling demons where I cannot just collapse in order to collect my thoughts before returning to the drama, usually with a slow paced adagio demon dragging my body back into the fray. This also provides an opportunity for your friends to try to help you, which is always funny.
Should you wish to escalate this to a state of Pandemonium you will have demons seemingly coming in and out of you at random. Your body is no longer a tool or even a temple, it is now a playground that is inhabited as and when these creatures need it. Throw yourself violently between the different tools with ridiculous abandon, shifting vocal tone, tempo and physical at every opportunity. Try to maintain the impression of a body that is being controlled, while also staying aware of the broad agenda behind the possession. This is difficult for others to interact with meaningfully, so should be kept extremely short; it can create tense scenes where the host has lost control of their channeling.
Whatever happens, remember to be kind to yourself when it is over. Have that drink, take that rest, and recharge your batteries. In larps the only reason to summon all the demons is to enhance the drama for everyone else around you. If you do it well you can create a complex situation that you can then enjoy trying to get out of. The satisfaction of allowing the dark forces to take control for a short while is its own reward. Something you can consider as the smell of wax and incense fades, and you are left with nothing but fear, ruin, and the fading afterglow of an intoxicating rush of endorphins.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Ford, Kol. “Summon All the Demons: The Exciting World of Larp Demonology.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
You can have exceptional games without having to be or do anything exceptional. Does this sound strange to you? We are convinced that it shouldn’t. Basing ourselves on a shared larp experience, which we managed to make exceptional for ourselves, we want to show that you can create larp magic without making yourself or your story big or unique, and that everyone can find the magic in the mundane.
Enjoy the small moments
We think that one of the first big steps you, as a player, should take, is moving away from the idea of playing a larp as a series of scenes. Every moment is a scene, and the sum makes up the whole of the story. So instead of rushing to preplanned scenes, savour the spontaneous moments that occur. Enjoy the state of being your character, instead of simply attending a scene. As players we both strive to make our characters and their stories richer by enjoying the small, unplanned moments. In turn these moments become powerful and memorable scenes, even if they hadn’t been planned beforehand. As an example we will make a point of sharing stolen moments of quiet with our characters’ love interests that become all the more meaningful because they are small and intimate, and the emotions and impact these moments leave on our characters mean more to them than big speeches or grand gestures ever would. If you are ready to flow with your character and with the small moments that are offered to them, then the small moment of being escorted to a big event by someone dear to your character can become more impactful than the big event itself.
Additionally, it adds a lot of anxiety to your experience if you’re too focused on the big scenes. You will find yourself checking the time and stressing about not missing anything, while also probably worrying about whether you will be able to deliver the scene. In this mindset you will forget to enjoy the small moments, and you may even forget to just be your character. When you plan stories you can obviously also have scenes in them, and you can even plan for these scenes. But always remember that these scenes are not the aim – the aim is what the scenes could make you feel. If they stress you too much to embody your character, drop them, they do not have to happen.
Sometimes a larp’s arc requires planned scenes, but the time in between important plot points is not time wasted. We believe this time “in between” is in fact fundamental to building a meaningful story and character arc. Life is lived in the gaps as much as it is lived in the big moments, and we want to devote as much care and consideration to these gaps as we do to the big scenes. It might not be as flashy, but it can be just as important. People, and indeed characters, exist when things are quiet as well, so giving yourself the time to feel them out in the calm between the storms can make the entire experience seem that much more meaningful.
Give up on being big or unique
Sometimes the most interesting characters are the entirely mundane ones. Your characters don’t have to be larger than life at every turn to have an interesting and unique story, rather the contrary, in fact. If every character in the larp happens to be “the chosen one”, there can be much more play in being the most mundane character around.
We have often seen people concerned about creating a character concept that hasn’t been seen before, and we have certainly fallen into that pattern ourselves, but with such an approach you risk forgetting the most important aspect of character creation; playability. If your character is meaningful to you, does it really matter if it has been seen a thousand times before? There’s a reason the same stories and archetypes keep returning – maybe their stories are actually interesting enough to be retold. You, the player, are the one who makes the story unique, worthwhile, and entirely your own, by adding your flavour and interpretation to it. So instead of going out of your way trying to come up with a brand new concept, own your story and play it in your own unique way. In a way it can be liberating to let go of the pressure to create something never before seen, it can allow you to shift your focus to what you really want to play and actively draw on inspiration from others. When developing your character, look towards similar concepts you have seen others play and spend some time reflecting on what it was that drew you towards them, which aspects of them you liked. And then take them for yourself! Why not make use of all the cool things you have seen friends and co-players do in the past, taking all the best bits to create the coolest possible character for yourself? The old adage that great artists steal should apply to larpers as well. When looking towards others we are sure that, apart from inspiration, you will find parts you weren’t as keen on or wish would have been done differently. You have a chance to do it better, or at least how you would prefer it, and that in itself automatically makes for a unique character.
Next to letting go of the idea of creating unique and big characters, we equally want to argue for the importance of small moments and impactful gestures. When we played together at College of Wizardry 23 (2020) we created a lot of meaning in the relationships between our characters with very little. There were a lot of jabs and meaningful glances between our characters, and our entire conflict of betrayal and resentment was something our characters never explicitly talked about during the first half of the larp, but their small, bitter remarks towards and about each other, the looks of hate and anger between the two of them, and the unspoken defiance and blame were something we played on a lot. In turn, when our characters later reconciled the subtle changes in how they looked at each other and addressed each other made a big impact. In many ways they were acting the same, arguing about the same things they always had, but now they smiled instead of glaring, they helped each other instead of gloating. We don’t believe it was a difference that a lot of our co-players noticed, but that was never the goal; it was important for us. We believe these smaller gestures are too easily forgotten or downplayed, but they deserve our attention. A small gesture can make a big difference if it ties into your story and adds to the whole.
Lastly, taking small gestures and intimate play one step further, we want to highlight the powerful impact of conflicts and emotions left unsaid and paths not taken. As is also clear from our previous example, play can come not only from small gestures and subtle changes in behaviour, but also from the things that are not explicitly spelled out. You can shape a large part of your experience by internalising your character’s emotions and playing on not talking about them while still showing them – clearly or subtly. There is a lot of play on unspoken emotions, on not saying things that are clearly there, as this creates a tension other players can choose to interact with in the way their character would read (or misread) them.
An example of this type of play on unresolved tension and unspoken emotions is the experience we had together at Dawnstone (2019). We had agreed beforehand on a potential for romance between our characters, and while during the larp this romance never came to fruition, its potential and the resulting interactions had a big impact on the stories of both our characters. During the events of the larp, it became clear that our characters cared for each other – they had brief but meaningful conversations; when one screamed out in agony, the other was immediately by her side to help her; they would find each other for small shared moments. They never confessed their feelings for each other but kept floating towards each other for various reasons. In the end, it only took one sentence while looking into each other’s eyes to establish again what they could’ve meant for each other, and while that very small and short moment was only shared between two players, it was nevertheless incredibly meaningful to both of our characters.
Making your story matter — to you, not to an audience
At the end of the day, the most important person in your story is yourself. It shouldn’t matter if everyone sees a crucial moment or if no one does – if the moment held meaning to you, it was significant.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that bigger is always better. The more people see what is happening, the more play it creates, right? In our experience that is not always true, and some scenes may indeed give you more if no one is around. We suggest trying to consider what intimacy could add to a scene that you would lose out on if there was an audience. Perhaps you would like to really focus on one or just a few other players, and with more players around you would be too concerned with engaging them instead of playing off those important to the scene. Or maybe you want to go big and dramatic without worrying about stealing the spotlight. It is our experience that a smaller scene often has more room for all players to go big, as when fewer people have to share the spotlight there can be so much more of it to go around. Intimacy is something special and valuable. It can add a sense of importance to a scene that you made time for each other, and only each other, and that alone often makes a connection feel deeper and closer. Having a big impact on few people can do just as much for a larp as having a smaller impact on many people.
One example, and a memory we both cherish, of how moments in a larp can be impactful without being big or having an audience, is a scene we shared at College of Wizardry 23. We had created a story arc together around family, betrayal, and resentment that involved chronomancy, which led to us playing out one pivotal moment in our characters’ past/present between just the two of us. We were our own audience, and played for our own character development, and as such we ended up creating a very intense moment and story together. As we were the only ones who actually lived through all of it, this added aspect of intimacy or privacy made it even more powerful.
Conclusion
In this article we wanted to argue that you can create some of your most memorable, or magical, moments in larp without having big scenes, doing unique things, or being that one special character.
We shared our own experiences with creating compelling stories without having to impose anything on others and while staying small. When you shift your focus to being your character instead of doing things as your character, to living the story as well as the emotions and creating small moments and gestures, you can build a deep and impactful experience. It’s liberating and enhances your play to stop worrying about moving from big scene to big scene, or about the uniqueness of it. There’s no need to bring something new to a game each time, and it can create better play and a better experience to play on something that has been done before. Just remember to do so in a way that works for you, as you are in the end the most important person to your experience.
Often it isn’t necessarily the big scenes that we carry closest to our hearts after having played a larp, it’s rather the unexpected small moments, the unplanned occurrences, the intimacy. It’s in these mundane moments that the magic happens in a larp, and we hope we have inspired you to go out and look for it.
Cover photo: Image by RODNAE Productions on Pexels. Photo has been cropped.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Bailly, Sandy, and Mia Kyhn. “Finding the Magic in the Mundane.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
Can we design larps that produce paranormal experiences?
Summary
Paranormal experiences are characterized by a perception that something that was previously thought to be impossible has happened. The paranormal is often part of the fictional settings of larps. We can, however, use techniques and practices inspired by events in the real world to allow our larp participants to experience what it is like to have a paranormal experience. These techniques should only be used with full and informed consent, and only as a tool to allow participants to shape their own experience. The article lists possible techniques for achieving collaborative paranormal larp experiences, and gives a concrete design example of a larp inspired by real-world psychic espionage.
Introduction
What is the paranormal?
People have always experienced strange events. They may have had a dream that came true, seen a ghost or witnessed a highly unlikely coincidence. Even though many believe in the reality of supernatural phenomena, and many have had strange experiences,((Between one third and one fourth of the population has had a paranormal experience, based on surveys in European countries . The proportion is higher in the US, where around half report at least one paranormal experience (Haraldsson & Houtkooper, 1991). Another survey found that over one third of British adults reported at least one paranormal experience (Castro, Burrows, & Woolfit, 2014).))these kinds of events are still considered really weird. For example, if you see a person you know to be dead, or something happens exactly as you dreamed, you will probably be surprised no matter what your beliefs were previous to that experience.
The paranormal means that which is outside the normal. It refers to events that we cannot explain through known natural forces. For example, seeing a weather phenomenon you do not know the exact cause of would be a normal phenomenon, but feeling like you are communicating with an intelligent blinking light in the sky would be paranormal. Having a paranormal experience then means sensing or feeling something that breaks with how you usually think the world works.
This article is about creating circumstances that allow us to have these kinds of weird experiences – which I will call “paranormal” experiences. They are perceived as being outside the normal world of experience, and they are often interpreted to mean that something that is ordinarily believed to be impossible has happened.
I will only discuss paranormal experiences that do not have a psychopathological origin. In other words, experiences that arise from healthy human functioning and not as a symptom of mental illness.
It does not matter if the paranormal is really real.
Some argue that all paranormal experiences are misinterpretations of ordinary events, and others argue that they truly are supernatural. No matter what we believe about the origin of these experiences, they are real for the person having the experience in that moment. For example, you may happen to think of someone the second before they call you and get a strange feeling of premonition at that moment. Later on you may think it was just a coincidence and forget it happened, or you may think you had a genuine psychic experience. Whatever you decide later, the experience was real when you got the call. This experience is the focus of this article, not the question of what is fundamentally real.
The paranormal can be more than a background part of the larp setting.
Often, the paranormal is part of the fictional worlds that are used as larp settings – settings where demons, ghosts or prophecies are real. My suggestion is that larp can also approach the paranormal in a different way – by creating a space where the participants can play with belief and allow themselves to experience, if only for a second, something impossible happening.
Larp is sometimes seen as a way to access other kinds of experiences, and we have played with everything from the sensual to the horrifying. Why not also the impossible?
All larps aiming for weird experiences must have full and informed consent as the basis.
The degree to which the participants can allow themselves to believe in the paranormal is an important factor in allowing paranormal experiences to happen. I do not believe it is possible to do this with unwilling or uninformed participants. It would also be unethical to design a larp where you trick someone into believing something impossible has really happened. Larp must be based on consent, and allowing paranormal experience is not the same as just scaring the participants. Leave the tricking to the false prophets and fraudulent mediums, and instead embrace the unknown in collaboration with your participants.
General principles for allowing paranormal experiences
Do not use any magic tricks or deception.
The techniques described below do not involve any tricking in the form of magic tricks or lying to your participants. If the aim is to have a genuine paranormal experience, then any tricks or deception will lessen the impact. If you use methods that involve suggestion or aim to increase the likelihood of a correct guess, be transparent about this.
If you design your larp free of tricks or deception, then any participant that has a weird experience during the larp is more free to attribute the experience to something paranormal rather than trickery or unintentional information leakage from the organizers. Allow the participants to believe in the weirdness of an experience without looking for the secret to a trick or trying to uncover deception on the part of the organizers.
Give the participants tools to believe in the experience.
A person’s beliefs highly influence how they interpret their experiences. The degree of belief is also a factor in allowing oneself to have these kinds of experiences. This means that the larp participants should be given tools for having their characters believe in the possibility of paranormal experience as strongly as possible. They can create, or be given, characters that have strong beliefs.
This also means that it is useful to pay attention to the context that the characters are acting in. Context is very important for how experience is interpreted. A noise on a busy street goes unnoticed. A noise in a haunted house may be interpreted as a paranormal event.
Give the participants tools to use their imagination.
Larps often use external cues for supporting the imagination of the participants. However, when designing larps that allow for paranormal experience, it may be useful to also give special attention to the inner worlds of the participants. The paranormal is often associated with vague sensations, hunches or inner impressions. The inner world is a play area that has great potential, and there are many techniques for enhancing the imaginative power of the participants.
Larp designs that allow the participants to focus on their inner landscape may find it useful to emphasize the group aspect of the larp, rather than leaving each participant isolated. Merely imagining the same thing as the rest of a group may feel more powerful than doing it alone. The participants can also be allowed to communicate and play up each other’s sensations, impressions and hunches, and thereby further enhance the experience.
One way to bring attention to the inner experiences of the participants is to guide them in some form of meditation. Various kinds of meditative practices are common in modern larps. Having the participants focus on their immediate surroundings and breath may lead to a pleasant and relaxed state of mind. This could be a kind of intermediate exercise leading to more intense experiences, or it could be used with the aim of creating paranormal experiences in itself. Unusual physical and mental experiences also commonly occur when meditating, and may be interesting especially to those who are new to meditation.
Prepare to give basic emotional support.
For many, the paranormal is associated with feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. This association is formed both by popular culture and because naturally occurring paranormal experiences often happen in connection to powerful and sometimes negative life events. While the people who choose to attend an event that is clearly communicated as connected to the paranormal are probably prepared to immerse themselves in the experience, they may still experience unpleasant emotions. Prepare for allowing participants to choose their degree of engagement, and for a soft landing after the larp. Familiarise yourself with guides and best practices for larp safety, a good starting point is Koljonen’s (2020) fundamentals of larp design safety.
Techniques for allowing specific paranormal experiences
In this article, I will focus on three classic kinds of experience that are often investigated in the literature on the paranormal. From skeptics and debunkers to ghost hunters and self-proclaimed psychics, these kinds of experience are often reported and written about:
Extrasensory experiences or “being psychic”
Experiencing a strange coincidence
Sensing the presence of a ghost
Techniques for allowing extrasensory perception.
Popular fiction is teeming with representations of characters who can see the future or sense what is happening far away, and self-proclaimed psychics are common in contemporary media landscapes.
Extrasensory perception (ESP) occurs when a person appears to get information that none of the ordinary senses could provide. Extrasensory experiences often have content of strong personal and emotional significance, and they are often vague and give only partial information about the event to which they presumably refer (Watt & Tierney, 2014). The experiences range from the relatively mundane, such as thinking of someone the moment before they call or guessing the outcome of some event to more intense experiences such as dreaming of an event that happens the following day or hallucinating something that is happening far away.
It is also possible to have second-hand ESP experiences by having information about oneself guessed by another person. This can be from a person claiming to be psychic, or it can be that a friend had a strange dream that fits very well with current life events.
Everybody guesses correctly once in a while, but what makes ESP experiences stand apart is the sense of wonder and impossibility that usually follows the experience. The emotional reactions to these experiences vary, with the most typical being happiness or anxiety (Watt & Tierney, 2014).
In a larp, participants can experience receiving information psychically through:
The possibility of guessing something.\
From 1983 to 1989, the parapsychologist Charles Honorton and his colleagues conducted one of the largest studies of ESP done to date (Bem & Honorton, 1994). Their method was to place two people, “sender” and a “receiver”, in two separate, acoustically isolated chambers. The “sender” looked at a randomly selected visual target, and the “receiver” was given the “Ganzfeld procedure”. This means that the person was reclining in a chair with translucent ping-pong ball halves taped over their eyes while a red floodlight directed towards the eyes produced an undifferentiated visual field, and white noise played through headphones to produce an undifferentiated auditory field. The receiver was instructed to pay attention to any images coming to mind, and to report verbally their thoughts. This went on for half an hour, and at the end the receiver was asked to guess which of four targets the “sender” had been looking at. At the end, the sender and receiver met and the true target was finally revealed.
While it may be too complicated to set up such an elaborate laboratory for a larp, it gives an example of what kinds of situations parapsychologists have created in order to facilitate ESP. Some participants reported imagery that aligned quite well with the target, and the experience of seeing the target revealed at the end must have been quite powerful for some of the participants.
By setting up situations where the participants may guess something correctly, you can make it possible for them to experience ESP. The more detailed, unlikely or obscure the target of the guess is, the more likely it is that someone who guesses it correctly will feel like they received the information through paranormal means.
Imagining something that may have relevance in the future
In 2003, a group of 47 people attending a “remote viewing” workshop attempted to imagine the circumstances under which Saddam Hussein would be found (Schwarz, 2018). They went through a series of exercises prompted by the instructor such as visualising various features of his person and surroundings. The participants then drew their impressions as best they could, and the workshop instructor Stephan A. Schwarz compiled a list of “consensus” impressions as answers to a series of questions. When Saddam Hussein was found about a month later, Schwarz compared the answers to the actual circumstances and was struck by what he believed to be close similarities between the participants’ guesses and the outcome.
The group exercise led by Schwarz is one example of trying to imagine something that may be relevant in the future. By asking the participants to imagine what will happen later in the larp, you can make it possible for them to experience precognition or sensing the future. Making more specific predictions will make it seem more unusual if any of the predictions come true. This technique might be relevant for a larp where there is a lot of uncertainty or where parts of the larp take place in an environment not fully controlled by the organizers. For example, the participants might imagine events that could occur, followed by walking around the city in a pervasive larp.
One important note about Schwarz’ workshop: The participants were asked if they would like to try and “find Saddam Hussein”, and could opt out. In fact, about a dozen of the participants did so. Make sure that your participants are aware of and comfortable with what the larp will explore.
Being the target of cold reading
“Cold reading” is a deceptive psychological strategy used to give, what seems to be, a convincing psychic reading (Rowland, 2002). Cold reading is not the same as simply guessing. It is a set of techniques to move from general to more specific statements in a conversation, and it requires conscious effort from the person doing the reading. Most people can learn the basics of cold reading, and it’s not unlikely that the recipients of cold readings experience the reading as a paranormal event. Cold reading is per definition deception, but that does not mean it cannot be used in a larp based on informed consent. Even if the participants know that cold reading is being used they may still feel that some guesses are more correct than they “should” be – after all, that’s the whole idea when using specific cold reading techniques.
The technique can be used in larp if there are enough facts established about the character being given the reading that it makes sense to guess correctly. It can also be used before the larp to prime the participants for experiencing something paranormal. If cold reading or a similar technique to increase the likelihood of guessing correctly is used, make sure to inform the participants in advance.
Techniques for allowing weird coincidences
Unrelated events coinciding in a meaningful way are often portrayed in fiction as a sign from God or destiny that a course of action is right or that the hero of a story is on the right path. In real life, many of us experience weird coincidences that have personal meaning (Coleman, Beitman, & Celebi, 2009).
These can be small events that merely seem a bit strange, such as hearing a favorite song on the radio immediately after receiving good news or seeing a meaningful phrase repeated several times in a row on social media. They can also be connected with big decisions or life-changing events such as “miracle” coincidences where unlikely events prevent fatal accidents, or a chance meeting that propels a career to the next level. One important component of a weird coincidence is how it makes the person experiencing it feel. Some may feel like the universe is perfectly in harmony in a single moment, feel dizzy or disoriented, or feel like they’re dreaming.
In a larp, weird coincidences can happen when:
Elements line up in an unusual and meaningful way
Experiencing that different external events line up in a way that seems to fit perfectly for your story or character can be experienced as a paranormal event. In real life, these kinds of events are often associated with meeting people in unlikely places, such as meeting your neighbor on vacation on a remote destination. If you are designing a larp with a very large playing area such as a city, these kinds of coincidences may occur.
Another kind of common event is seeing meaningful or recurring images or text. One example is the frequency illusion, where an obscure phrase or idea is encountered many times in a short period of time. Another example is seeing images or text that strongly relate to what you are currently thinking or doing, such as seeing someone post just the recipe you were looking for on social media. In a larp, these coincidences can be encouraged by including complex environments with many small details. For example, you may include a screen that shows random wikipedia articles, or randomly generated sentences may appear in an app that gives the characters advice.
The participants interpret random events as signals from the universe
The series “Hellier”, available free on YouTube, is an example of a group of people who follow strange coincidences wherever they lead. In the series, a group of paranormal investigators investigate what they at first interpret as an appearance of alien creatures. However, as the investigation proceeds they interpret a wide range of events as signals from the universe that they are investigating a greater mystery. The mindset of these investigators allow them to experience otherwise ordinary events (such as finding a tin can or a balloon) as paranormal.
One way to enhance the feeling of random events as meaningful is to guide the participants in interpreting everything as signals from the universe to the character. This could mean following weather patterns, seeing symbols in maps or simply exploring an area in great detail while interpreting the findings as signals. As the reading of these signs lead to the characters taking action, the signs may seem like meaningful guides for the character’s journey.
Techniques for allowing the perception of ghosts
Hauntings and visits from the dead have been the focus of a great number of works in popular culture – both in fiction and in ghost-hunting series presented as nonfiction. Experiencing communication with departed loved ones is the least common of the three kinds of paranormal experiences discussed in this article, but one representative survey in Great Britain still found that around ten percent report having had this experience.
People who sense what they perceive as ghosts report a wide variety of experiences. Common varieties include a feeling of something being present, temperature change and strange sounds and smells. In some cases apparitions are seen, either clearly or as vague shadow-like figures (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keeffe, 2003).
In a larp, participants may experience sensing a ghost through:
Interpreting sounds and images as signals from ghosts
Participants can experience stimuli that allow them to easily imagine “something” being present. This can allow them to sense the presence of ghosts or other entities. The stimuli can be vague sounds such as white noise or short random clips from radio stations. It can also be visual impressions such as shadows or points of light.
The near-death researcher Raymond Moody is famous for his “psychomanteum”, a large mirror with dim lights on either side. When one sits with this mirror for a while, it is common to experience slight hallucinations. Moody used this for an apparently successful kind of grief counseling, where the bereaved were given the opportunity to believe that they were contacted by deceased dear ones (Moody, 1992). A similar technique may be used in larp to allow participants to feel like a ghost is nearby.
Participating in a seance
Seances are well-known through ghost stories and horror movies, and are often associated with fear and negative outcomes. However, contemporary spiritualism is usually more oriented towards positive emotions and the hope of survival after death. Many of the techniques used in contemporary seances can be useful for larp designers. This includes fostering a positive, creative and “party-like” atmosphere before the seance, encouraging openness to whatever may occur during the seance and ritual techniques during the seance itself.
Wiseman, Greening, and Smith (2003) document cases of paranormal experience in seances using suggestion. They hired an actor to play the medium, and he made clear at the start of the seance that he did not possess any mediumistic powers, and would simply guide the participants through the seance. During the seance, the actor made suggestions of paranormal events such as that a table moved. These suggestions led several of the participants to experience what they saw as paranormal events. In fact, about a third reported after the seance that the table had moved. Several participants also indicated that they had experienced the kinds of strong sensations and psychological states often associated with paranormal phenomena, such as feeling a strong sense of “energy” or smelling something unusual. One approach to larp design could then be to simply give the participants the opportunity to conduct a seance. This may in itself allow them to experience weird phenomena.
Another possible source of inspiration is “the Philip experiment”, where a Canadian group of parapsychologists imagined that they believed in a ghost, and called to him every week for several months (Owen & Sparrow, 1976). After a while, they reported physical phenomena including hearing knocking sounds and seeing the large seance table move around the room. This paranormal experience created through a structured process of make-believing in a ghost may also be achieved in a larp.
Visiting haunted environments
Places known to be “haunted” may more easily allow experiences associated with sensing ghosts. Experimental research suggests that at least some of the reports of sensing ghosts arise from factors in the environments where the ghost was sensed. This could simply be that the environments are cold, draughty and include sporadic, unusual sounds (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keeffe, 2003).
Some researchers have also suggested environmental factors such as local magnetic fields or radioactivity. In recent years, many have paid special attention to low-frequency sounds or “infrasound” (Parsons & Cooper, 2010). Some research suggests that exposure to this kind of sound may lead to feeling a sense of presence, experiencing temperature changes and seeing vague peripheral hallucinations. Haunted environments may then be places where these kinds of sounds occur naturally.
Allowing larp participants to visit such environments may allow them to more easily sense ghosts or other entities. Of course, the safety and legality of the visit should always come first. A serious larp organizer should have little difficulty getting access to a comfortable but haunted hotel or similar place.
The larp Controlled Remote Viewing (2020) by the artist Mark Durkan and myself is an example of a larp that uses several of the techniques described above to open up the possibility of experiencing being psychic.
In this larp, the participants take the roles of characters joining the first session of a training programme for enhancing psychic potential. The goal of the larp is to give the participants a practical impression of what techniques real-world government agencies have historically used to train psychic spies. The larp also allows for the possibility of experiencing real ESP in the form of correctly guessing an image hidden in an envelope. The larp is designed to be run in a black box and takes three to four hours from start to finish. I will outline some important design choices we made for the various phases of the larp.
Before the larp: Real ESP targets and double-blind selection
Before the larp, we give a person who will not be present at the larp access to a database of several hundred images that were historically used in a psychic espionage training programme (the “Stargate programme”). This person chooses a set of targets, prints them and seals them in brown envelopes. This means that neither the larp organizers nor any of the participants know what the targets are, except that they are images of places on Earth. This means that if any participant comes close to guessing the target during the larp, they are more free to attribute the guess to ESP rather than trickery or unintentional information leakage from the organizers. This is clearly communicated to the participants.
Pre-larp briefing: Clear communication and safety measures
When the participants are gathered for the larp, we start by stating that our goal is to re-create historical training programmes and explore how using a character as an alibi might generate an ESP experience. We then list the various techniques we will use in the larp and give special attention to how the participant may bring themselves out of any unpleasant experience. We also make clear that they can leave the room at any time, and that we will be available for a chat after the larp. We focus on making sure that the participants feel that they are in control of how they make use of the lightly consciousness-altering techniques that we use.
Pre-larp workshop: characters with strong paranormal beliefs and a guided visualisation of a paranormal experience
The participants are given characters who have a strong belief in the paranormal. This is both stated in the character description and reflected in a set of “test scores” that the characters are given at the beginning of the larp. These scores are explained before the larp, and are presented as results from real-life psychological tests showing high scores on items that have been associated with ESP ability, such as a high degree of belief in the paranormal.
The participants are also invited to a guided visualisation of the characters paranormal experience. This is done by first guiding the participants to a state of heightened focus and then asking them to imagine a strange event in the characters life unfolding. The participants are guided by open questions about the event and are asked to use hand movements as visual feedback to the larp organizers about their progress in imagining the event. The visualisation technique relies on continually affirming that the participant is in control of the experience at all times. We also use inviting and open language, allowing the participant to choose to imagine the event in great detail or to skip over all or parts of the event.
The aim of this is to give a strong sense of what it is like to be someone who has experienced weird things and who believes in the possibility of ESP.
During the larp: Use of sensory homogenization to enhance imagination
During the larp, the characters sit for approximately ten minutes with white covers over their eyes, a strong red light focused on their faces and loud white noise from a set of speakers. The aim is to enhance the participants imagination and possibly allow for light auditory or visual hallucinations, making it more easy for the participants to imagine the targets that they will later try to guess.
During the pre-larp briefing we test this method by asking the participants to sit in a short practice session and calibrate the level of light and noise that we will use during the larp. We also make clear that they can remove their eye covering if they feel uncomfortable.
During the larp: Guided meditation and creative exercises
During the larp, the characters try to guess the image inside a sealed envelope. To facilitate this, we invite the participants to focus their breath and enter a state of calm focus. Then they draw a series of increasingly complex shapes, culminating in a drawing that incorporates the elements they have created and that aims to represent the target. After this, the envelope is opened and the characters discuss their performances.
The aim of this technique is to allow all the participants to slowly build a repertoire of shapes and impressions that they can draw from to compose an image. Clear shapes and textures makes it easier to discuss the drawings after opening the envelopes, and allow for the possibility of guessing parts of the target.
After the larp: A short de-roling, round of impressions and the possibility to talk more
After the larp has ended, we facilitate a short exercise to leave the character behind and invite the participants to sit in a circle and share a short sentence or two about how they are feeling right now. After this, we hang out for a while and make ourselves available if any of the participants want or need to talk.
The purpose of this is to give a slow landing after the larp and to be able to detect if any participants have had an emotionally unpleasant experience. We do not expect this larp to be particularly disturbing for the participants, but we acknowledge that the paranormal may evoke feelings of anxiety. We therefore wish to help the participants have a pleasant and calm ending to the larp.
Conclusion
I have outlined some general principles and techniques for allowing paranormal experience in larp. Larp is sometimes seen as a way to access a variety of ways of experiencing the world. The larps that are organized around the world today are filled with all kinds of unusual experiences, and allow the participants to explore areas of themselves that may be hidden in everyday life. With the ideas and techniques in this article, we may now also design larps that allow us to experience the impossible.
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Cover photo: Image by Tumisu on Pixabay (cropped).
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Bruer, Erlend Sand. “Paranormal Experiences in Larp.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
A few years ago, I was cast as a character linked to the paranormal in a Victorian game played over several instalments. The organisers allowed us to choose our own preferred play-style and specialisation. I quickly decided that I wanted to play a character who led seances. I was interested in exploring themes of real mysticism against fake seances. I wanted to use a very visual way of running the scenes and decided that I wanted to do something using fortune-telling cards or tarot.
Playing the expert
My character was supposed to be an expert on the subject of card readings. She did both real readings with the intention to actually help the subject and fake ones, which were merely used to tell the rich customers what they wanted to hear. Initially, I thought to bring a regular tarot set to the game, but I quickly stepped away from that idea for two reasons;
I was not an expert on tarot. It would have been an option to study regular tarot cards very thoroughly, but I knew that there would likely be more knowledgeable players around.
Many people object to the use of real tarot sets at games. After all, for many people tarot actually serves a purpose akin to religion so it is not necessarily right to bring a real tarot set to a game. I wanted to respect this.
For a while, I debated whether a store-bought card set would work fine for my purposes, but I eventually decided against taking something that was readily available.
Building my own cards
That brought an entirely new challenge: building my own set of cards and making them suitable for the game. I’ve researched existing fortune-telling methods and came to realise that the perfect number for cards was somewhere between 30 and 50. It would mean there would be enough variation to not draw the same card every single time I’m but it would also mean that I didn’t have to learn the meaning of too many cards and I could make it look like my character actually knew exactly what she was doing.
To figure out what to put on the cards, I contacted the organizers to learn more about this Victorian setting with a hint of Steampunk. I wanted to know how present those elements would be and if they would be represented in cards that were made to fit the world. I tried to find items that were very ambiguous meaning wise, so they could be explained in many different ways.
I ended up photographing 40 different items that were appropriate for the setting, like an hourglass, a Venetian mask and a pearl necklace. I then edited the photographs to look like paintings and had the set of cards professionally printed.
Interpreting
I love making small-talk before a card reading, especially if I don’t know the other character. It gives you some hints on what to play with, much like actual fortune-tellers do. While drawing cards onto the table I’d attempt to watch the other person’s body language. It’s often hard for the person across from you to suppress their initial reaction to a card. Sometimes characters (and even players) would clearly display surprise, shock or excitement when you drew a card that they had strong feelings about.
Once I laid out the cards I would always ask the other character for a quick interpretation. I’d ask them whether any cards stood out to them or whether they believed the spread was ‘’right’’ for them. They’d often start talking about topics relevant to them which then gave me very easy hooks to progress the conversation with.
After that, I’d spend some time interpreting the card spread as a whole. Sometimes it would be very easy to make up a story on the go and sometimes I needed to check my booklet which contained example card spreads and interpretations of each card. I created the booklet primarily for my own peace of mind, so I could have consistent interpretations and always had something ready to go even when I was low on inspiration.
I’d often intentionally fall quiet during interpretation, which meant that the other player would likely start to talk a little bit more about what they were seeing. I’d weave those verbal and physical cues into my story as well. As the game progressed card readings became easier to do, I knew quite a lot of the characters and had an idea of what made them tick, which made it easier to actually give them a relevant story.
The magic of the game
The cards ended up being way more popular during the game than I had initially expected. I thought that at most I would be doing one or two readings each time but people actually really loved the idea and requested seances and card readings constantly. This was partially due to the fact that the paranormal themes of the game were much more physically present in play than most players initially expected. Many characters struggled with feelings of uncertainty and anxiety about the “unknown factors” and were desperately seeking some sort of comfort and direction.
As the story of the game unfolded I discovered that the items were much more suitable than I could have imagined. Some items on the cards turned out to be present in the game in their most literal sense. In one case there was a tiny boat that would lead us to an island in the middle of the lake – which we were forbidden from accessing. While determining our strategy for the upcoming days we kept drawing the card with the sailing boat and eventually, the characters decided they could no longer ignore their destiny and to just break the rules, so they did row to the island anyway.
Even though it was, especially in such circumstances, sometimes hard to resist, I never forced a hand of cards or prepared a card layout. Part of the fun of playing with the cards was allowing myself to be surprised and challenging myself to spin an appropriate interpretation.
There was even one reading where a player went to check with the organizers afterward. They were so surprised by the reading they were wondering whether I had read their (secret) background.
Staying flexible
One of the best parts about having my own cards meant that nobody knew the rules that applied to them. I decided early on to allow myself total creative freedom and whenever I had a fun idea I would just execute it.
Throughout the game I’d whip out the cards for advice, like drawing a single card to determine whether something was a good idea or not. On one occasion a new character who seemed to have some shady business going on appeared. As we tried to figure out whether or not to trust them we drew a card. The card indicated they had noble intentions so we as characters decided to trust them completely.
Or I’d ask people to just draw me a card and then analyze their personality based on that card. Characters who were close to my character became more familiar with the cards and their meaning and I would sometimes ask them to interpret for me or pick cards for specific situations. This led to a lot of play as I could constantly adjust the flow of the readings and adjust their length and severity to what I thought the game or the player needed or wanted on an out-game level.
That freedom also became visible in the option to re-interpret cards on the fly. In one case my character decided that a card with a pearl necklace stood for monetary riches as the character was a rich factory owner even though that was originally not a noted interpretation. My character lied about the meaning of the card as she believed that it was what the man whom she feared greatly wanted to hear. It led to a much more consistent story as a whole and a character (and player) who was convinced that I had stacked the deck to get a specific outcome.
Looking back on the game now and the role the cards played in shaping the journey of not only my own character but also that of those around her, I dare to say there was definitely “magic” in play. Some of it was created by us as the players as we read the stories in the cards but a large part of it was more serendipitous. We wouldn’t have the stories we have now about crazy adventures in boats fueled by a random card draw if we hadn’t opened ourselves up to that.
Cover photo: Image by cottonbro on Pexels. Photo has been cropped.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Mutsaers, Susan, and René van den Berg. “Let Me Look into Your Future.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
[Editorial note: This article is intended as a parody. Please read it as such].
1. Use your ageing body
So you got some wrinkles now. Some grey hair. A sore back that doesn’t allow you to stand for too long. And a bad knee that doesn’t allow you to run. Instead of weeping over the past glory of your once young body, why not embrace the “war scars” and make them part of your backstory? And no, that does not mean that you are now obliged to play only older characters. What if the wrinkles are part of an ageing spell a witch once cast on you for trying to steal her partner? What if your hair turned prematurely grey overnight when your best friend died trying to save you from an assault? What if the bad knees are not due to age, but an “accident” you had while horse riding when a rival aristocrat sabotaged your stirrups to steal your seat in the council? Punchline: Less make-up on the face, more make-up on the backstory!
2. Revamp older ideas
Parthenogenesis rarely occurs in any form of art, larp included. That means larpers and larp designers often will “borrow” ideas from other forms of fiction, and that’s okay; but when the majority of larp enthusiasts have the same pop culture influences, things can and often will get repetitive. Well, guess what? You can actually bring some “innovation” into the fictional “gene pool”, merely by going further back into the past: Remember that old cartoon you were watching when you were 5, that youngsters these days haven’t even heard of? That series of comic books that are now out of print? That old b-movie that even its protagonist doesn’t remember having made? Dig up all the daguerreotypes and clay tablets from your back yard and borrow ideas from there… And have fun watching younger larpers get excited over how innovative and creative your imagination is!
3. Stranger than fiction
Another invaluable source of inspiration for characters and plots: Your own life. It might be a cliché, but life is stranger than fiction, and you’ve had a bigger share of life than most of the younger larpers (hence the wrinkles and “war scars” mentioned in Tip #1). So, go ahead and honour those wrinkles: Looking for a good villain character inspiration? How about that boss at your summer job when you were 19? Erratic character? How about that veteran hippie barista in the local pub of your old neighbourhood? Cunning character? How about that classmate of yours at university that managed to get a degree without ever opening a book? Epic adventure material? How about that camping weekend in the summer of 1989? Unfulfilled love material? How about that person from high school, remember their name? Yes, yes, of course you remember…
4. Sit down noob, you’re in for a tale
You were there when it all began. When the local larp community was first established in your area. When the first larp was run in the local park, and someone called the police on you. When the first article on larp appeared in the local newspaper and your relatives started making concerned phone calls to your parents after seeing your picture. You were there long before the younger larpers, and the stories you can share with them are wilder than their imagination (and probably funnier). Do share them! It will give them a more profound perspective on their beloved hobby, bond the community around its shared history, and make you look like a respected war veteran in their eyes. So go ahead, put that “I was there, Gandalf…” look on your face and mesmerize them!
5. Back in my day…
…However, beware of the trap of the glorious veteran: Just share the tales. Do not turn them into a lesson. Yes, of course back in your day things were different. Things felt different, sounded different, tasted different, were done differently… And yes, maybe some things were better back then. Maybe times were more innocent, less digitalized, less complicated, or more complicated… But that does not mean things are less meaningful now. Allow evolution to take place. Yes, even in your favourite hobby. Experience its innovation and creativity. And if not, well, then at least let the younger larpers enjoy it without judging them.
6. Take your youth supplement
George Bernard Shaw said that “we don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”. Wise words that probably do not scare any larper! Larping is keeping us young, and all larpers probably have a very good relationship with their inner child. However, do you know what else can help keep us young, apart from larp itself? That’s right, hanging out with younger larpers. And not just hanging out to share our epic tales of yore (see Tip#4) or, even worse, tell them how things should be done (see Tip #5). Just hanging out to listen. To learn. To gain a more fresh perspective on things. To understand how the newer generations are thinking. Just hanging out… and absorbing the fresh, revitalizing air of youth. Or the fresh, revitalizing blood of youth, if you’re into vampire larps.
7. Keep up with the lingo
If you follow the advice of Tip #6, you will probably very soon face an unforeseen problem: You may very well not comprehend a substantial part of what they are saying! Depending on the age difference and the general amount of time you spend with young people in your everyday life, the percentage of unknown words may vary between 20% and 70%. Especially if you also communicate with them via texts and chats, you will also be faced with incomprehensible abbreviations that look more like secret codes or commands in some unknown programming language. This point is crucial: Do not get disappointed and do not give up! If you feel comfortable, ask for a translation. If not, Google is your friend. In any case, soon you will be proficient in a whole new world of slang, meta pop-references, memes and cool ways to feel 10 years younger when you’re texting.
8. Don’t be everyone’s parent
Another trap to be aware of if you end up forming close relationships with younger larpers. Do you want to form friendships? Great! But beware… no matter what you do… no matter how much you end up caring for these people… do yourself (and them) the favour of not becoming their parent! It may sound funny at first, but it’s a tricky balance to keep. Because, let’s face it. They don’t have your experience. They probably don’t have your maturity. And they may be vulnerable, still at a phase in their lives where they’re struggling to make sense of themselves and life in general. They can probably use all the care and love you are willing to genuinely give them. But becoming their babysitter will not allow them to grow, and will not allow you to enjoy your hobby. If you ever feel you may have fallen in this trap, consider saving a stray cat or dog instead, or get yourself some house plants.
9. Larpers and larps growing old together
Larp is, by definition, a hobby created by us, for us. As we grow older, more mature, and more experienced, or simply as we evolve and become different people than those we were yesterday, it is up to us to make sure our hobby can keep up with our development. The characters you are used to playing don’t feel meaningful anymore? Time for new character development. The larps you used to enjoy don’t thrill you anymore? Maybe it’s time for exploring new themes. Are you a larp designer, or are you in close contact with one? Contribute to creating new larps that speak to the psyches of the gradually maturing larp community. And if that means adding a little bit more of existential dread, grief and loss, and contemplations on the passing of time in the equation, so be it! We were never here only for the joyous themes, right?
10. Energy management
Approaching the end of this list, a message from your local physician: Take care of your body while larping. That is of course true for younger larpers as well, but, you know, they are still at the phase where they think they are invulnerable. Take care of yourself, so that you can keep enjoying your favourite hobby for many more years to come. Take breaks if you’re in a multiple-day event or festival. Take your vitamins if the gameplay is demanding. Don’t push yourself over your limits, not even the greatest larp of your life is worth you collapsing at the end. And lastly, don’t forget to hydrate!
11. And for the end, the obligatory cliché…
Just be yourself, enjoy larp, and make sure others enjoy it too. It may be a cliché, but it is timeless and ageless, just like you. 😉
Cover photo: Image by stevepb on Pixabay. Photo has been cropped.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Diakolambrianou, Elektra. “10 (+1) Tips for Larpers Over 35.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
